By Mark Ellis
A pastor in eastern Uganda and eight other Christians are unaccounted for after a Muslim mob attacked a church service, locked the congregation inside, beat several members and raped 15 women, according to Morning Star News (MSN).
An angry horde of 90 Muslims burst into the evening prayer meeting of Katira Church of Uganda at about 8:30 p.m. on January 15th and beat congregants with clubs and sticks. Previously Muslims had thrown stones at the roof of the church building to disrupt church services of the 500-member congregation.
About 80 members were in attendance at the evening service. One believer who escaped before the doors were locked heard one of the attackers shout, “Away with the pastor who is converting our Muslims to Christianity,” according to MSN.
At the time of the attack, Pastor Moses Mutasa was outside questioning some visitors. He attempted to flee, but it is unclear if he was captured or killed.
“We do not know what has happened to our pastor, Moses Mutasa,” Pastor Mukenye told local officials. “He might have been killed or has been kept hostage.”
The assailants locked about half of those in attendance inside the building, beat the men and tied them up while they raped the women. About 50 men and 30 women had attended the prayer meeting, and most of those locked inside were women, sources told MSN.
Muslim terrorists positioned outside the church also beat the men and raped the women as they tried to escape, a church elder said.
“Women’s clothing was found inside and outside the church building,” he said.
The abused women received treatment at a clinic in Katira.
Police did not arrive until two hours after the assault began, sources told MSN. Several church members were trampled in the rush to get out of the building. Much church property was also damaged.
The assailants were radical Muslims from the surrounding area, which is predominantly Muslim.
When police arrived, the attackers fled. Two days later, church members found leaflets accusing the pastor of converting Muslims and threatening more attacks, villagers said.
On the morning after the attack, some church members intent on retaliating gathered, and as tensions mounted police intervened, convening a meeting with Christian, Muslim and local political leaders on Jan. 22.
Christians were planning to destroy the village mosque in order to send a message that they were not cowards, but Pastor Mukenye urged them to adopt an attitude of forgiveness, and they ceased from their plans for vengeance, demonstrating a critical difference between Christianity and Islam.
Pastor Mukenye told MSN that Christians should leave justice to authorities (and the Lord).
“This act is evil, and police should not relent until the attackers are arrested and charged in a court of law,” he said.
About 85 percent of the Ugandan population is Christian and 11 percent Muslim, with some eastern areas having large Muslim populations. The country’s constitution and other laws provide for religious freedom, including the right to propagate one’s faith and convert from one faith to another, but Christians in eastern Uganda are suffering continual attacks by Islamists.
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Photo: The Rev. Musa Mukenye pleads for Christians to forgive Muslim assailants. (Morning Star News)
These are sexual activists purporting to be religious.God says do not kill,why kill?After all they will also die
Islam is a religion of war. Muslim majority countries are always persecuting the Christians. Well they are slaves, so a slave will always behave like a slave. Muhammed fought wars throughout his life while Jesus brought peace. But Christians should now start defending themselves before they treat the whole world like Turkey.
Islam is an evil and wicked religion,all the evil acts of terrorism are being carried out by islamic followers(muslim),it is about time christians should rise and take the bull by the horn cos we are not cowards.
Can’t muslim leaders and clerics call their followers to order. If they go for prayers what do they pray for? Or is it a sin to live in peace?Please leave Christians alone.
Sometimes you people will just talk without sense of deep thinking, this kind of sentences is what always result to religious war most expecially among the Hausa because of their fiery temper.The story of Prophet muhammad (S.A W) which most of you were saying has never persecuted anyone or forcing people to join Islam,Muhammad(SAW) left the city he was born because of persecution of Muslims by the meccans and went to medinnah which was about 3000km away from mecca but this people still vow to wipe out the Muslims and came to medina .Then Muslims pleaded to their Master to allow them to fight back for survival which he reluctantly grant them with the following conditions.
1. Never attack an harmless man( I.e don’t attack someone who hold no weapon)
2. Don’t attack the women and the children
3. Don’t attack the old age people.
Even after the battle , their war leader was caught alive by Muslims which Prophet Mohammad still grant him his freedom and the man later came back and became a Muslim.
During the time of Muhammad, there were Christians in mecca but did you have it in your history that they where attacked? Just like Yoruba,igbo, Hausa ,Greek and English,Arabic is a language which can be speak by born arabs or those that learn it. We have criminals,ritualist,terrorist and good people among igbos,yorubas and Hausas and so on but whenever you heard people speaking in Arabic you’ll conclude that they are Muslims, just like ur believe when bokoharam just came to Nigeria but now a nigerian with working common sense will never call bokoharam Muslims because they attacks without discrimination. You guys should just stop saying stories you did not understand that can cause inter-religious war because everyone will suffer for it because I don’t think there’s families in Nigeria that will not have Christians and Muslims. Please let preach peace in our churches and mosques and avoid phantom stories that can cause war among us. One love!
Let the muslims call their followers to order. When the Christian God brings revenge they will be consumed in great multitude. Yorubas calls muslims ‘Imole’ the difficult and hard religion. They force and kill innocent people…is this a religion?
This is the best fiction Ive read in a long while.
Muslim clerics should call their followers to order. Why is it Muslim muslim every time? It’s like Ahmad Abiodun Yusuf doesn’t want to be truthful, and wants to be one sided. If not, by now, he should have asked himself, why is it muslims causing trouble everywhere,in Nigeria,Uganda etc.? Ahmed, I advise you to embrace a more peaceful religion. Even in your comment, I can see a trace of aggression in it. No wonder the attitudes of Trump, the American president, and the President of Australia towards the devilish religion, that can never preach peace.
No more gods = no more war
It is high time for other world leaders of Christian countries to adopt Trump’s system, or else the whole world will be plunged into disaster.
1 Timothy 3.12-In fact anyone that wants to live a Godly life in Christ Jesus may be persecuted.Jesus said in Mark 10.30……..with persecutions.But God in Psalm 37 declared that the persecutors or unrighteous will not be all time so that people of God will not join evil.The Pastor is really a man of God. Your brothers love you and came to you with words of life, peace, health and joy but you rush them with war like Cain. We invite the Uganda Police and the Government to arrest those that did this very very dangerous and evil thing to the loving and peaceful people in Uganda.Their religious preacher must be involved to tell OAU what he preaches to the guys.
Christians should fight back and ask God for forgiveness, it’s geting too much of these so called muslims
I believe if the government of Uganda can do justice to the Christian such things will stop not like our nigeria leader that are pampering criminals giving them money not to kill Christians, trying to to sponsor war instead of sponsoring the bills that will bring nigeria out of recession, telling us that somebody can just come from no where and occupy your land bcs they believe they are at the top today forgetting that it will come to an end one day.
I wonder why people are believing in barely lies and instigated story that will bring dispute among true believers.
Mustapha usman,you spoke like one of them, whenever Muslims commit atrocities you see their evil members denying the reality of the incident, they will say it was fabricated. And they will begin to warn against the danger of such stories causing religious disorder. Shame on you!
Islam is always violent. It is a religion for hell bound subjects. Do not be amazed by their reactions, the devil finds it a most convenient environment to achieve his end time agenda.
I can find no mention of this story on Ugandan news sites, such as http://www.monitor.co.ug/ and http://www.newvision.co.ug/. You’d think such an atrocity against Christians in a majority-Christian country would be front page news on a website focused on said country, but that is not the case.
This is just fake news. Please remove it ASAP. As I live in Uganda as missionary we search and got nothing from the local news, neither confirmed from our local contacts. No one there knows about it. We know the people of God are suffering persecution in many places but this fake news are just confusing people. Please, remove it ASAP. Thanks.
I spoke with the source of the story, Morning Star News. They said their correspondent in Nairobi sent a second reporter to the site and he recorded a pastor there on video confirming all the facts, and that area police also confirmed the story. They said there has been an effort in the area to deny the story, as an attack took place in the same area on the same weekend that was not persecution-related, and some are confusing that event with our story.
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