Resilient in their faith
Pakistan’s Christian minority: Lahore attack is just one of many assaults
When a suicide bomber slaughtered 72 people and wounded more than 200 in a park in Lahore on Easter Sunday, I immediately thought of my friend Patrick, his wife and their two little girls, who are members of Pakistan’s Christian minority.
The murderer targeted an Easter gathering of picnicking Christians. Among the dead were 29 children. The atrocity, which reportedly killed more Muslims than Christians, was claimed by Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, reputedly the most ruthless faction of the Pakistani Taliban.
Only two days before the attack, Patrick had emailed me from Islamabad. He said, in part, “We are fine by the grace of God and happy at the coming of Palm Sunday. We pray the coming Easter will bring you lots of happiness and blessing. Please pray for us, too.”
As bad as the attack in Lahore was, it was not the deadliest of the many assaults on Pakistan’s three million Christians. Three years ago, two suicide bombers killed 127 worshippers at All Saints Church in Peshawar.
The deaths in Lahore followed the execution of Mumtaz Qadri, a police officer, convicted off assassinating Salman Taseer, Punjab’s governor. Taseer was targeted because he tried to change the country’s blasphemy laws and defended a Christian woman whose death sentence for insulting the Prophet Muhammad was eventually overturned by the courts.
Immediately after Sunday’s attack, thousands of Islamists marched from Rawalpindi to nearby Islamabad, commemorating what they regard as Qadri’s martyrdom. When they reached the capital without any intervention by police, they went on a rampage before beginning a sit-in outside the offices of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. They have threatened more violence if, among other things, the government does not implement their draconian interpretation of Shariah law and call off an army campaign against them in tribal areas near the Afghan border.
Although they ended their protests Wednesday, tensions have been heightened by the arrests over the past four days of hundreds of Taliban militants in counter-terror raids across Punjab. However, moving against the Taliban is not only dangerous, it is politically complicated.
For years, Pakistan’s intelligence service encouraged the Taliban to cause trouble in Afghanistan. Many Talibs have now returned home as a political and religious force not only in their traditional tribal strongholds but across Punjab, the country’s economic heartland.
It is in this turbulent world Patrick and his family live. We met soon after the 9/11 attacks. He was a bachelor and manager of the Jacaranda Guest House in the Pakistani capital’s leafy diplomatic enclave.
Over the years, Patrick became a good friend. He also shared with me his obsession with collecting a big enough dowry for an arranged marriage that is still the custom for Christians as well as Muslims in those parts.
But mostly he told me of the tribulations he and other Christians faced in the surging violence against their community’s homes, schools and churches.
As the reign of terror of Jamaat-ul-Ahrar and other terrorist groups has crept eastward and southward, most westerners no longer dare to come to Pakistan. Business dropped off to nothing at the Jacaranda and Patrick’s employers, who were moderate Western-educated Muslims, began to skip paying his monthly salary of about $120. For want of custom, the Jacaranda finally closed two years ago, another victim of Islamic extremism. After a difficult period Patrick found work in another guest house, but for less money.
Christianity in Pakistan is a resilient force. One of the reasons may be that most Christians are unusually pious and few more so than Patrick. He sprinkles his conversations with constant references to the Almighty. I am not at all devout, but that has never bothered Patrick. That I was a Christian was enough for him. The couple of times I attended mass with Patrick, dozens of army troops lined the streets leading to Our Lady Fatima Church. Despite the risks, the services, which were mostly celebrated in Urdu, were packed.
Now, Patrick is not sure how much longer his daughters, Romana and Simona, will be able to go to their convent school safely. As it is, armed guards are on the buses the sisters use to travel to class every day. Despite the carnage in Lahore, Patrick was characteristically upbeat and unbowed although his family lives only a few kilometres from where extremists were baying for more blood in front of the parliament buildings.
“First of all I want to tell you that our family is fine here. It is so sad news with the Christian dead in Lahore,” he wrote in an email Tuesday after attempts to speak with him since Palm Sunday had failed because all cellphone service in Islamabad had been cut off.
“Dearest Sir please take care of your self too and please be safe always may God bless you and keep you under His safe Hand.”