Prayers for "Katherine Russell that she escape this cult now that her jailer is dead"

That from Mark Shea as he links to a piece likely seen as problematic in the eyes of many but most bluntly proper in my own:

At this moment the dominant theme of “Boston Bomber” headlines is motive. The secular mainstream media, having failed to get their wish for redneck extremist Christians protesting tax increases orcelebrating Hitler’s birthday, are casting about for any alternative narrative (from “bored punks who acted alone” to “products of America’s violent video-game culture” to “we’ll simply never know”) to replace the obvious and emerging one: that the Tsarnaev brothers were spearheads of an organized effort to bring Muslim jihad terror to America.

One hopes that the facts about motive will come to light sufficiently to overcome all but the most willful attempts to ignore them. Meanwhile I wanted to look at another aspect of this horrendous story: a victim whose suffering may not be getting its due: Katherine Russell, the widow of dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Many years ago I worked in the chancery at a Midwestern diocese. At one of our weekly staff meetings a colleague brought up a prayer intention for a friend of her daughter’s, who the previous year had met a Saudi man in college. She had fallen hard for his charm, refinement, and attentiveness. He was so different from the farm boys she’d grown up around! After a whirlwind courtship she had married him, and in short order bore a child. After the birth they’d gone back to Saudi Arabia, ostensibly for a family visit.

But she never returned. She was a Muslim wife now, a prisoner, property. Her formerly devoted-seeming husband became, at the flip of a switch, cold and abusive. Now her parents were pressing every legal and political means they could to bring their daughter and grandchild home.

I never found out what became of this poor girl. But as Katherine Russell shows us, her story was no isolated exception. In fact, in some parts of the world it has become common enough to get its own name:love jihad.

Read the rest and become informed about the war on women the left ignores while attacking the Catholic church for its alleged misogyny.

Comments

[Kris, in New England]

The idea that the widow is somehow complicit in the bombing has bothered me greatly. Like the story outlined above, I once knew someone in a similar situation. Young girl fell hard for a slightly older, middle eastern man. He was charming, wealthy, educated and seemed to be all that one would want in a devoted spouse. So she married him, converting to Islam at the same time. Once she was married, it all changed. She had a baby in short order and - POOF - her husband became abusive, demanding she cover her hair and be accompanied by a male relative wherever she went. This all took place in Washington State...the last thing I knew the girl had fully retreated from her own family, in total thrall to the Muslim monster she married.