A nun holds a picture of Pakistan’s slain minister for minorities Shahbaz Bhatti during a candlelight vigil in Lahore March 12. (CNS)
On March 2, Shahbaz Bhatti,
Pakistan’s federal minister for minorities and the nation’s most prominent
Catholic layman, walked out of his mother’s home in Islamabad and entered the
rear seat of his black Toyota Corolla. As his chauffeur began to drive him up
the street, a Subaru blocked the way. Gunmen dressed in traditional local
clothing got out and fired a few shots at the Corolla’s windshield. The gunmen—two,
three, or four, depending upon which local press account you read—came around
to the left rear and shot Bhatti dozens of times. The assassins then sped away.
It was 11:00 in the morning.
Family members who heard the
shots ran out of the house. A niece attempted to take Bhatti’s pulse and later
showed a British reporter the bloodstain on her hand. The chauffeur drove
Bhatti to the nearest hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The assassins left pamphlets
at the scene of the crime; as translated by Newsweek Pakistan, they
stated:
This
is a warning from the warriors of Islam to all the world’s infidels, Crusaders, Jews, and their operatives within the Muslim
brotherhood, especially the head of Pakistan’s infidel system, [President Asif
Ali] Zardari, his ministers, and all the institutions of this evil system… In
your fight against Allah, you have become so bold that you act in favor of and
support those who insult the Prophet. And you put a cursed Christian infidel
Shahbaz Bhatti in charge of the committee [for reviewing the nation’s blasphemy
law]. This is the fate of that cursed man. And now, with the grace of Allah,
the warriors of Islam will pick you out one by one and send you to hell, God
willing.
Bhatti’s assassination
followed a particularly cruel year for Pakistan’s 2.8 million Christians, 1.1
million of whom are Catholic—fewer than the number of Catholics in Connecticut,
spread out over a nation twice as large as Montana. The country is 97 percent
Muslim and 1.5 percent Christian.
“The cross has a special
meaning in Pakistan,” Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha of Lahore, the nation’s second-largest
city, said in 2009. “It is related to the everyday sufferings and difficulties
we face in this terror hit-country.”
Despite some encouraging news—such
as the headlines “Pakistani Islamic leader issues a fatwa against terrorists”
and “Amid persecution in Pakistan, Dominican vocations flourish”—a selection of
Catholic World News’ 2010 headlines manifests the truth of the prelate’s
statement:
Catholic girl brutally murdered in Pakistan
Pakistan: Lawyers intimidate witnesses, observers at
trial of Christian girl’s accused killer
Pakistan: Muslims burn down Catholic home, police
ignore incident
Pakistan: Christians protest release of girl’s alleged
murderer
Muslims attack Christian churches, homes in Pakistan’s
largest city
Pakistani archbishop laments Taliban tax on
non-Muslims
Another “blasphemy” arrest draws protest from Pakistan’s
Catholic bishops
Pakistani bishop laments failure to arrest Christians’
murderers
Pakistan: Five killed as Islamic militants attack
Christian church
“Brutal execution” of three American Christians in
Pakistan
Catholic shot in front of church in Pakistan
Pakistan under pressure to revoke death sentence on
young mother for “blasphemy”
Pakistani Christians outraged at acquittal of girl’s
alleged rapist, murderer
Pakistani court: No pardon for Christian woman
sentenced to death
Pakistan: Imam offers reward for death of Christian
woman
Pakistan: Terrorists issue fatwa against Catholic
cabinet minister
Pakistan: Court orders government not to change
blasphemy law
Pakistan: Bishop denounces rape of nine-year-old
Catholic girl
Pakistani Church leaders fear reprisals after
Christmas Eve protests against blasphemy law
A few of these headlines
refer to Asia Bibi, the Catholic mother whose death sentence on blasphemy
charges led to international protests; most, however, refer to incidents
largely unknown in the West.
The assassination—the nation’s
bishops say the martyrdom—of Shahbaz Bhatti and the cruel year of 2010 did not
arise in a vacuum, but were the culmination of decades of Islamization that
have made Pakistani Christians among the world’s most oppressed.
“CHURAS”
Nearly six centuries before
the founding of Islam, an apostle set foot in what is now the northeastern
Pakistani province of Punjab, says the author of several books on Pakistan.
“St. Thomas came to Taxila [a
Punjabi city] in the first century and then went down south and passed away in
Goa [in India],” says Professor Iftikhar Malik, senior lecturer in history at
Bath Spa University in the United Kingdom and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
He told CWR that “there must have been a Christian community of one form
or the other in the early era, but then Buddhism and eventually a reinvigorated
Hinduism changed the entire demographic configuration until the arrival of
Islam.”
Islam arrived with the
conquest of the region by the Syrian Ummayad general Muhammad bin Qasim in 712.
“The entire history of invasions and migrations, especially across the Indus
Valley—the present-day Pakistan—must have made it difficult for Christian
community to survive,” says Malik. “The Mughal Emperor, Akbar the Great
(1542-1605), did invite Jesuits to his court, and they joined his multi-faith
debates amidst high hopes that the emperor would eventually convert himself.”
With the collapse of the empire, the area became part of the British colony of
India in 1858.
Protestant and Catholic
missionaries entered the region, built churches and schools, and began to
evangelize high-caste Hindus in the hopes that they would be converted and
influence others. The strategy, in general, did not work.
Eventually, missionaries made
their way to Punjab, where they evangelized the Churas—the region’s dalits or
untouchables. “They were sweepers and scavengers, forced by Hindus and Muslims
to live outside village limits, because they did the work those religions
considered shameful,” the Michigan-based Calvin Institute for Christian Worship
notes. “They removed dead animals from roads and fields, tanned animal hides,
and cleaned latrines and streets. Hindus thought even a Chura’s shadow was
polluting.”
Malik adds, “On the one side,
education brought greater respect for Christians, yet concurrently they
suffered from the age-old views on untouchability.”
More than a century later,
“Chura” remains a term of opprobrium, a slur directed at Christians, according
to Shaheryar Gill, associate counsel of the American Center for Law and
Justice. “Every Christian in his life has experienced being called that
derogatory term by his Muslim neighbors, friends, and others,” he said in a
2010 interview with the Zenit news agency. Gill, a Pakistani Christian,
explained that “this term for Christians has been imported [from the Hindu
caste system], and it signifies Christians as low-caste citizens.”
By 1931, Christian Churas
outnumbered Hindu Churas around Lahore, Punjab’s capital. Pakistan became
independent in 1947 with the partition of Muslim-majority regions from India
and the end of British colonialism. Three days before independence, Muhammad
Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder and first leader, said that
history
shows that in England, conditions, some time ago, were much worse than those
prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted
each other. Even now there are some states in existence where there are
discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God, we
are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days where there is no discrimination,
no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one
caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle
that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State.
This vision of a largely
Muslim but secular Pakistan did not survive. The 1956 constitution, while
recognizing religious freedom, declared the nation an Islamic republic and
stated that only a Muslim could serve as president. Nonetheless, Malik notes
that Christian “schools and colleges were viewed as the best in the country
until nationalization happened under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto,” a Berkeley-educated
socialist, in 1972. By the late 1980s, a lower percentage of Christian children
than Muslim children were attending school.
ISLAMIZATION
In 1978, General Muhammad
Zia-ul-Haq, who had overthrown Bhutto, launched what is known as Pakistan’s
Islamization. Sharia courts were granted power to overturn some civil laws,
amputation of the hand was declared the punishment for theft, and flogging and
stoning were declared the punishment for adultery. From 1979 to 2002,
Christians were permitted to vote only for candidates for four designated
Christian seats in national assembly elections. All students—even non-Muslims—were
compelled to study either Islam or Islamic-based ethics as part of the school
curriculum.
“The Law of Evidence and
Compensation requires two women witnesses to counter the evidence given by one
Muslim man,” Archbishop Saldanha wrote in 1987. “The evidence of a Hindu or
Christian carries the same weight as that of a Muslim woman. In the case of
murder, compensation for a male Muslim victim is to be double that for a female
Muslim or other minority member victim.”
Under the leadership of Zia
(1978-88)—a staunch US ally following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—Pakistan
also adopted its controversial blasphemy laws. Under the laws, the “misuse of
epithets, descriptions and titles, etc., reserved for certain holy personages
or places” is to be punished by imprisonment, and the defiling of the Qur’an
carries a sentence of life imprisonment. In 1986, the most controversial
provision was adopted: “Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by
visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation,
directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad
(peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and
shall also be liable to fine.”
For more than two dozen
years, Zia’s Islamization has helped shape the culture of what is now the world’s
sixth most populous nation. In 2005, the US Commission on International
Religious Freedom stated that “many” of the nation’s “thousands of Islamic
religious schools…continue to provide ideological training and motivation to
those who take part in violence, targeting religious minorities in Pakistan and
abroad.”
Discrimination as well as
violence affects Pakistan’s Christians. “About 80 percent of the Catholics lack
education and training,” Asia Focus reported in 1991. “A small number of
Catholics have risen to respectable posts, such as teachers, doctors, lawyers,
and businessmen.… While a middle class is emerging, posts in the top executive
brackets are still denied Christians because of prejudice or discrimination.”
Christians, more often than not, work in the fields of Muslim landowners or as
sanitation workers or domestic servants.
In this climate, numerous
Christians have chosen to convert to Islam—at least 20 per week by early 2011—to
escape persecution, to seek better economic opportunities, or to obtain a
divorce. Not all conversions have been freely chosen. Between 1999 and 2006,
431 Christians converted to Islam following abduction, according to the
Pakistani bishops’ National Commission for Justice and Peace.
BISHOP JOHN JOSEPH
In the 1980s and 1990s,
Bishop John Joseph of Faisalabad, a Punjabi city that is the nation’s third
largest, became the most vocal defender of the rights of the increasingly
beleaguered Christian minority. Arrested in 1995 for speaking out against the
state—the charges were dismissed—he said in 1996 that “in the name of religion,
countless injustices have been practiced in the last 49 years in Pakistan,”
adding that the blasphemy law “opened the floodgates of religious fury.
Religious extremists and fundamentalists started accusing non-Muslims all over
Pakistan of blasphemy.”
The effects of General Zia’s
Islamization inflicted an increasing toll on the nation’s Christians, as documented
in the archives of UCA News, Fides, and other Catholic news agencies. In 1988,
a priest and an American nun were shot by unknown assailants, and tens of
thousands of flood victims complained that they were denied government aid
because they were Christian. The following year, demonstrators stoned a
Catholic school to protest the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic
Verses, even though Catholic and Protestant leaders in Pakistan had joined
Muslims in criticizing Rushdie’s treatment of Muhammad. In one town, local
Muslims boycotted Christian stores, Christians were pelted with bricks, and a
Protestant church was destroyed. In Karachi, the nation’s largest city, four
teenagers broke into a tabernacle, desecrated the Host, smashed windows, and
defecated in the sanctuary.
In 1991, Sharia became the
supreme law of Pakistan. A Christian member of the national assembly was beaten
by police, and members of the ruling party hurled stones at a Catholic parish.
Following a Christian protest, police entered the Lahore cathedral, “beat
children, elders, and women and used tear gas, as a result of which 35 children
and 20 women were injured,” UCA News reported at the time. “The cross was even
kicked.”
Two Christian brothers—Gul
and Bashir Masih—were imprisoned on blasphemy charges; while Bashir was
released, Gul became the first person sentenced to death under the law. The
charge stemmed from a conversation Gul had with his neighbor—after the neighbor
told him that Christians believe in three gods and that the Virgin Mary must
have been a prostitute, Gul responded that Muhammad had 11 wives, one of whom
was a child. After three years, Gul was acquitted. “In jail I had a good
opportunity to read the Gospels anew,” he later recounted. “They have convinced
me that forgiveness and love are central in the Christian message. I forgive
each and every one who was against me.”
Naimat Ahmar, an
award-winning Punjabi novelist and a Christian, was stabbed to death by a
student in 1992 after allegedly making disparaging remarks about Muhammad.
Local police and government officials reportedly reacted by kissing the face of
the killer. Later that year, seven Christian street sweepers in Karachi were
tortured in a government-run school by activists of a leading local political
party. Christians took part in protests when the government proposed listing
religion on the national identification card. In response, an Anglican bishop’s
residence was stoned in the Punjabi city of Gojra; later, another Anglican
bishop was kidnapped.
In 1993, armed robbers
terrorized rectories and convents in Punjab, and Christian lawmakers were asked
to swear an Islamic oath before taking their seats in parliament. Later that
year, after kidnappings and other forms of intimidation failed, local landowners
seeking additional property bulldozed the small Christian village of
Sikandarabad in the southeastern province of Sindh, destroying a church and the
homes of the 40 residents.
By 1997, the persecution
became even more intense. Following an alleged Qur’an desecration, a mob of
between 15,000 and 20,000 attacked two Punjabi Christian villages, desecrating
churches, burning 200 Bibles, and setting fire to 800 homes; at least 300
police reportedly looked on as the violence took place. The nations’ bishops
urged Catholics to pray for their persecutors, donate a day’s salary to the
homeless villagers, engage in peaceful protests, and repent of their sins.
“The only salvation for our
beloved motherland is a secular Pakistan, or democratic republic of Pakistan,”
Bishop Joseph said in 1996. “Blood is flowing, meaninglessly, all over
Pakistan. In order to stop this bloodshed, we offer ourselves. We are ready to
suffer, so that peace may come.”
Particularly troubling was
the stream of blasphemy cases that followed the arrest of Gul Masih.
“Basically, two types of Christians are accused in blasphemy cases: those who
are too poor to defend themselves and those with high living standards,” Father
Aftab James Paul of Faisalabad said in 2009. “Settling of personal scores and
jealousy are the main driving forces behind both types.”
By 1998, four Christians had
been sentenced to death for blasphemy, three had been acquitted, and an
additional five had been killed in prison. In May 1998, as Bishop Joseph was
leading prayers for a change in the blasphemy law, he told the assembled
parishioners that “we cannot engage lawyers, the judges are scared and give
biased judgments. We have no way except to shed our blood and that time has
come to make sacrifice.” He then traveled to the steps of a courthouse and shot
himself.
Bishop Joseph’s suicide did
little to change the conditions of Pakistan’s Christians; in ensuing months,
two more Christians were arrested for blasphemy, 16 Christian homes and shops
were destroyed in Karachi, and a mob of thousands attacked an Anglican boarding
school in Faisalabad after Christians were blamed for starting a hospital fire
in which the Qur’an was burned.
SHAHBAZ BHATTI
In the dozen years following
Bishop Joseph’s suicide, the young Catholic layman Shahbaz Bhatti became a
leading defender of the nation’s beleaguered Christians. Born in 1968, Bhatti
hailed from Khushpur, a Punjabi village with 7,000 Catholics; known as the
“Vatican of Pakistan,” it has produced 20 priests and more than 100 nuns in the
last century. Bhatti founded the Christian Liberation Front as a college
student in 1985 and helped found the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance in 2002.
Elected to the national assembly in 2008, he was appointed federal minister for
minorities, becoming the nation’s only Christian cabinet minister.
In addition to a stream of blasphemy accusations,
persecution of Christians continued to rage in the late 1990s and in the early
years of the 21st century. In 1999,
vandals destroyed Bibles in a Protestant church in Punjab, and police raided a
Christian slum in Karachi, reportedly beating women and children. In Sindh, more
than three dozen men armed with hatchets attempted to drive Christian farmers
off their land. In Pakistan-administered Kashmir, 70 Christians were arrested
for blasphemy.
The following year, a
78-year-old nun was beaten to death near Karachi, and seven Christian women
were gang-raped in a bus near Lahore. In the years that followed, worshipers in
Protestant and Catholic churches throughout the country were attacked, beaten
and killed. A Christian school was attacked and six people were killed in 2002;
seven Christians were killed at an ecumenical office in Karachi that same year.
In a 2002 pastoral letter,
Bishop Andrew Francis of Multan exhorted Catholics to continue to attend Mass
on Sundays and holy days despite the fear of violence, emphasizing the
necessity of prayer and the Eucharist for a Christian life.
One hundred and fifty
students at an Islamic school attacked a Protestant church in Islamabad in
2005, forcing 70 Christian women outside and beating some of them. On Easter
Sunday, gunmen opened fire during a Protestant service in Lahore, killing one.
In November of that year, a mob in Punjab attacked Catholic and Protestant churches
after a Christian reportedly desecrated the Qur’an.
On Palm Sunday in 2007, a mob
of 90, shouting, “Kill the Christians,” attacked a Christian enclave in a
Punjabi town. Later that year, a Protestant bishop and his wife were murdered
in their home. In the Punjabi village of Nizampura, the impoverished Christian
parents of a 14-year-old gang-rape victim were threatened after they pressed
charges.
In 2007 and 2008, Youhanbad,
a Lahore suburb that is home to Pakistan’s largest Christian community, saw
increasing violence against priests and religious: a priest was attacked and
tortured, a nun was beaten, and another nun’s throat was slit. In 2008, when
terrorists bombed the federal investigative building in Lahore, the adjacent
cathedral and three Catholic schools were practically destroyed.
The summer of 2009
foreshadowed the cruel year of 2010. Using firearms and explosives, a mob of
thousands destroyed the Christian village of Korian in Punjab in July after a
Christian family in the village had been accused of blasphemy. Two days later,
a mob of 800 attacked Christians in Gojra, burning seven alive. Bishop Joseph
Coutts of Faisalabad charged that “a banned Islamic group” “wants to ‘purify’
Pakistan by making it a strictly Islamic, theocratic state” and desires
non-Muslims to “either convert to Islam or leave the place.… They want a sort
of religious cleansing.” In August, after local Christians received telephone
and mail warnings for months urging them to “convert to Islam or die,” six
Christians were killed and seven were injured. The killings took place in
Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, which adjoins Afghanistan.
In this context of violence
and discrimination, Shahbaz Bhatti strove to amend the nation’s blasphemy laws.
“I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ, who has given his own life for
us,” he said several weeks before his assassination. “I know what is the
meaning of the cross, and I follow him on the cross.”
“When I’m leading this
campaign against the Sharia laws for the abolishment of blasphemy law, and
speaking for the oppressed and marginalized persecuted Christian and other
minorities, these Taliban threaten me,” he continued. “I’m living for my
community and suffering people, and I will die to defend their rights.”