I always find this impression very sad. Islam turns everything it touches into Arab culture. There was a show on EWTN about Bishop Macram Gassis in Sudan. The Muslim government was only allowing him to come home a few times a year; mostly, he lived in Kenya, I think. So there’s a scene of a village celebrating Easter. The Catholics are dressed in brightly colored clothes of what you’d identify as typically African cut and style. As part of the celebrating, the men are holding their walking sticks straight up in the air. There was obviously a vibrant culture at work here.
Then a neighboring village came to help celebrate Easter. They were Muslims, but came to rejoice with their neighbors. They were all wearing the long white robes you see in Saudi Arabia. No walking sticks. Muslim names. Except for their skin, you would’ve thought they were Arabs.
It was obvious that the religion that respected the local culture was Catholicism. Islam had wiped out the local culture and supplanted it with Arab culture. The Khartoum government has been trying to force the south of Sudan and the Darfur region to go under Sharia law and become Arabic. There’s a truce in place, but it remains to be seen if this time it will actually work.
St. Bakhita (my daughter’s namesake) was kidnapped at a very young age by Muslim slave traders. She lived in Darfur in the late 1800’s. They beat her so badly that she forgot her name, so they named her “Bakhita”, which means “fortunate.”
St. Josephine Bakhita, please pray for the peace of Sudan!
, rather than building up Christians 
