Android database rawQuery not working as expected

This is the code I'm trying to run:

        open();
        database.beginTransaction();

        Cursor cursor = database.rawQuery("UPDATE message SET is_read=1 WHERE id = 'user1' AND (mid IN ('msg1','msg2'))",null);
        if (cursor != null) {
            if (cursor.moveToFirst()) {
                <... success ...>
            }
            cursor.close();
        }
        database.endTransaction();
        close();

And it doesn't work - the response is successful but my cursor has no updated rows.

The same query against the same database work perfectly fine in pure SQL (I'm using sqlitebrowser). What's happening here?