It’s dangerous to be a Christian in Pakistan. At any moment some disgruntled Muslim can declare that you have desecrated the Qur'an, and then all hell breaks loose.

That is what happened in Pakistan recently. On Sunday, July 25, everyone in the village of Korian was going about their normal business. (Sunday is a business day in Pakistan, a Muslim country.) Down the street a wedding was taking place. People tossed currency notes into the air in celebration, and the children caught them, according to Brian Sharma, writing for Compass Direct.

Compass said that a Muslim funeral also was taking place nearby, that Muslims had asked the wedding party to silence their music, and the wedding party had declined to do so.

Christians in Korian attacked

The next day Muslims met with the bride’s parents, Talib and Mukhtar Masih, and said their son had cut pages from the Koran into currency-size pieces and was tossing them into the air. Some had fallen to the ground, and people trampled on them.

Talib replied that nothing like that had occurred, but he would double check with his son, and if anything like that happened, they would quickly apologize.

That was not good enough for the Muslims, who had their minds made up. They immediately began beating Talib and Mukhtar, until Talib fell unconscious to the floor. The next day Muslim clerics announced from the local mosque that if any Christian wanted to save his life, he should flee.

On July 30 a mob of about 500 formed and proceeded to attack, loot, and set fire to 75 houses of Christians. Christians, seeing the mob coming, left their dinners on the tables and their cooking pots on the stoves with fires under them and fled for their lives. One paralyzed man, 80, and his 73-year-old wife said the attackers let them live when they saw they could not flee. The mob then blocked the road so firefighters could not get there.

Photo shows one of the burn victims in Korian. Photo submitted by Pastor Mubrak.

Compass Direct quoted a local resident as saying, “These assailants first looted these houses and then set them on fire and closed the door. Since then, not a single Christian is left there except a very old couple.”

Pastor Asif Mubrak, whose church was destroyed in the violence, said the mob blocked the road, preventing firemen from fighting the fires.

Pastor Faisal Anwer, pastor of Faith Christian Ministry in Karachi, said people were being stopped on the street and asked if they were Christians, and if they answered affirmatively, they were beaten. In Pakistan Christians are mostly among the darker-skinned people, and even some Muslims with darker skin were beaten.

Christians in Gojra attacked

The next day the village of Gojra, a Christian community of about 2,000 homes about three miles away, felt the rage of Muslims. Christian families had settled there 50 years earlier. That day a mass of 1,500 to 2,000 people gathered allegedly for a political procession. As in Korian, another undocumented rumor of the Qur'an being desecrated set the crowd off, according to Compass, though details were not given.

Christians carry their dead in a post-riot funeral march in Gojra. Photo submitted by Pastor Anwer.

When they drew near the Christian section of the town, they attacked the Christian homes, setting fire to 100 homes, resulting in the death of 10 people. News agencies reportedly said four Christian women and one child were burned alive in the rampage, and an eyewitness said others died of gunshot.

A report by the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS) said, “There were unaccountable people in the mob, and they were out of control, because only four police constables were trying to stop the mob of thousands of people.”

Some claimed the rioters used a special chemical that is hard to put out once ignited, as they did in the Shanti Nagar rampage in 1997.

Local Christians condemned the statement of a government officer in Punjab that the Muslim marchers were peaceful until someone shot at them to provoke an incident.

A Christian family sits in their burned out home. Photo submitted by Pastor Anwer.

Members of the mob attacked a Catholic church and destroyed it, using firearms and explosives and setting it on fire, according to CLAAS.

Pastor Anwer said a member of his church was affected by the violence. The man’s elder sister lost her husband and five other family members, along with her house. She is now a young widow and must go and live with her brother.

Pastor Anwer is attempting to provide beds and bedding for 100 people, books and uniforms for 100 school children, and other needs. Click here to view a detailed list.

The plight of Christians in Pakistan

Christians in Pakistan, at best, are second-class citizens. The country was separated from India in 1947 as a Muslim country (the name in Urdu means “Holy Land”). Though at first all peoples were free to practice and proclaim their religion, in the 1970s Islamists began pressing their agenda and in 1991 Sharia (Islamic) law was imposed.

A blasphemy law written in 1927 banned insults against any religion. In 1986 dictator General Zia-Ul Haq modified the law to protect only Islam. Iqbal Haider, then the Minister of Law, urged reform of the blasphemy law because several people had been falsely accused. Muslims put a price of $40,000 on his head.

Benazir Bhutto attempted to change the law, but was unsuccessful. The last President, Pervaiz Musharaf, attempted to change the law, but failed.

In a Muslim country, Muslims are “believers” and Christians are “infidels.” According to Sharia law, the testimony of an "infidel" (i.e. a Christian) man is worth only half that of a Muslim. And the testimony of a Christian woman is worth only one fourth that of a Muslim man. So if a Christian woman is violated, she must find four witnesses to validate her testimony against one Muslim man. And if Christians are accused of blasphemy, they have no evidence. It is one testimony against another.

Christians in Muslim countries are always at a disadvantage because it is expected that the Christian will always defer to the Muslim. On June 30 Sardar Masih, a 37-year-old Christian field worker driving a tractor, asked Muhammad Hussein, a Muslim man, if he would move out of the way so he could pass. The Muslim community was insulted that a man of such low esteem as a Christian field worker would address a Muslim in this way, and 15 to 20 Muslims attacked Masih’s family, wounding his brother on the head.

Photo shows Pastor Asif Mubrak standing in his burned-out church building in Gojra. Photo sent by Pastor Mubrak.

On July 3 a local Muslim cleric used a mosque loudspeaker to broadcast that Masih had blasphemed Islam. Never mind that this was a “made-up” charge. This precipitated a Muslim rampage through Bahmaniwala village, breaking gates, wrecking and plundering Christian homes, and in some cases beating Christian women, according to Compass Direct. Some vehicles and other items were set ablaze, though fire damage was minimal.

Kandhamal: One Year Later

On August 24, 2008, terror swept through the Kandhamal District of Orissa State of India as Hindu mobs tore through some 300 villages, burning homes and businesses of Christians, killing whomever they caught, and destroying church after church.

Their leader, Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, had been gunned down by Marxist terrorists the day before, but the Hindu loyalists blindly blamed the Christians. Bent on vengeance, some members of the mob in several places poured gasoline on paralyzed or wheel-chair-bound victims and set them on fire. One woman fled after seeing her husband hacked to pieces.

The violence raged on through the month of September and burned to the ground 4,640 homes of Christians, 252 churches, and 13 educational institutions. It left more than 100 dead and 50,000 stranded in squalid relief camps, according to an August 18 Compass Direct news release by Vishal Arora. The All India Christian Council states Much of this was summarized as it was happening in “Orissa’s Nightmare: Will It Ever Go Away?” sent out by WCM September 12, 2008. A burned-out church and vehicle in Kandhamal 2008.

As this edition is dispatched, there still is an uneasy peace in Orissa. Christians are afraid to return to their home villages, where their homes still lie in ruins, and many have relocated to other states. Though some 2,500 complaints were filed with the police, only 827 of those reports have been completed, and of the 11,000 persons named as attackers, only 679 have been arrested, according to a news report by IANS. The rest, including those who chopped up the woman’s husband, still roam the streets.

On June 8 Christianity Today reported 17 of the 19 persons charged with raping a nun had been arrested, and the remaining two were listed as “absconders,” which meant the police could seize their property if they did not show.

The August-September 2008 violence was preceded by a shorter spell of violence that began on December 24, 2007, and spilled over into the new year, burning 730 houses and 95 churches, and rendering thousands homeless.

On June 15 the National Commission for Minorities said the Orissa state government had failed to take enough steps to restore normalcy in Kandhamal District, citing 1,900 people still in relief camps. Due in part to the federal government’s inability to protect minority groups from violence, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom placed India on its “watch list” of countries that require close monitoring on religious freedom issues.

The USCIRF report said, “Because the government’s response at the state and local levels has been found to be largelyinadequate and the national government has failed to take effective measures to ensure the rights of religious minorities in several states, the Commission decided to place India on its Watch List for 2009.”

Continued prayer urged

Please continue to pray for Christians in these two countries, as the governments are not responsive to their needs, mostly because they held hostage by the majority Muslim and Hindu populations, respectively.

No additional word has been received concerning the fate of Maryam and Marzieh in Iran. In a sense, no news is good news, because if they had been executed, it would have made the news. Please pray for them as they continue incarcerated and under interrogation and pressure to deny their faith.

A new prayer guide, Iran 30, has been published by ELAM ministries, a ministry composed of expatriate Iranian believers. I urge you to obtain this guide and pray for Iran for 30 days. It can be obtained from www.elam.com.