By Michael Ashcraft –
Taking advantage of widespread chaos in Bangladesh, Islamists came at night on Aug. 8, ransacked evangelist Rupali Sarkar’s home and shop, and set both on fire.
“Me and my family are very vulnerable,” Rupali told God Reports. “We can’t sleep. I’m awake at home even though it’s late here. My husband is keeping watch outside.”
For 10 years the Sarkars have ministered in Satkhira, Khulna, Bangladesh, preaching the gospel and caring for orphans and widows. Christianity is less than1% of the population in this southeastern sector of the Muslim nation.
Christians are not the only ones targeted by BNP Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest Islamist movement in Bangladesh. Hindus and Ahmadiyya Muslims are also being attacked.
Student protests led to the prime minister’s resignation on Aug. 5 and the overthrow of her secular government. Protesters, aggravated by high levels of unemployment, have shut down police stations, and anarchy has ensued.
As Islamists have done around the world, local extremists are taking advantage of the chaos to sow terror and attempt to seize control.
“There are open murders, burnings, people can’t work now because every family is starved of food,” Rupali reported. “There is no food. People are running from one place to another. There is looting at night and mostly women are being raped.”
While they did the evangelistic work, Rupali and her husband, Pastor Tapan Sarkar, have subsisted on the store’s limited items of oils, soaps, food.
“This shop was our only source of income to feed our family,” she says. “We have lost everything.”
Bangladesh, like Pakistan, was founded as a place of refuge for Muslims to immigrate to after widespread internecine conflict broke out between Muslims and Hindus in India after the subcontinent gained independence from Great Britain. In 1971, Bangladesh won independence from Pakistan, as it felt it was the neglected Eastern enclave.
It is the third largest Muslim-majority population. Bangladesh has run a secular parliamentary government since inception and has banned the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami in 1971 and again this year on Aug. 1. (The original ban was lifted in 1975 after a military coup took over.)
Jamaat-e-Islami strives to institute shariah law and ban all non-Islamic laws and practices. Since Mohammad and his followers imposed Islam with pillage and plunder, radical groups like Jamaat seeking to restore pure Islam don’t hold themselves back from human rights abuses when given the opportunity.
The Sarkars are descendants of Hindus, but their parents converted to Christianity, Rupali says.
To learn more about a personal relationship with Jesus, click here. If you wish to help the Sarkars, send Western Union, Money Gram or Wise.com to Tapan Sarkar, Bangladesh. For more information, ask the writer of this article, Mike Ashcraft 310-403-6471.
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About this writer: Michael Ashcraft pastors a church in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.
