Good News & Bad News
In Africa, every year six million Muslims convert to Christianity, and very few Christians convert to Islam. In Iran, every day 50 boys and girls convert secretly to Christianity, despite the threat of capital punishment for doing so.
However, some Western women in Europe are embracing Islam. In the Netherlands, Karin van Nieuwkerk writes that women are “attracted to Islamic conceptions of manhood and womanhood and to its clear moral boundaries and rules…. Women regain the possibility of living according to their ‘feminine nature.’ Contrary to Western socialization, Islam values motherhood and the nurturing qualities of women…. In Dutch society women are obliged to earn an income and Islam permits women to stay at home and raise children.”
Modesty also attracts women to Islam. One woman became a Muslim because she thought that the “hijab is liberating because it forces people to judge a woman according to her intellect instead of appearance.” The hijab, a headscarf and sometimes a veil that covers the face except for the eyes, reassures the husband that other men cannot see his wife’s beauty; only the husband can see his wife’s beauty. (This according to www.mercatornet.com, Jan. 15.)
In the West, Catholicism has largely given in to feminism. The rates for Catholics are similar to most others when it comes to contraception and abortion. For most Catholics, there are few moral boundaries between the sexes, motherhood is not valued the way it once was, and girls and women are coaxed into the marketplace. Modesty is forgotten.
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