Bruce Van Voorhis

The execution of seven Christian employees of Idara-e-Amn-o-Insaf (Institute for Justice and Peace) on Sept. 25, 2002, in their office in Karachi are the latest casualties of members of minority communities in Pakistan. They follow two attacks within a one-week period near Islamabad in the preceding month. The first attack on Aug. 5 at the international Christian school in Murree, which serves the children of foreign missionaries and humanitarian workers, resulted in the death of six people, an attack that was followed four days later by the killing of three nurses and the wounding of 20 others at the Christian hospital in Taxila. In addition, several months earlier the chairman of Idara, Advon Moon, was killed in his office on May 22; and on March 17, a grenade attack on a Protestant worship service 400 yards from the U. S. embassy in Islamabad resulted in the death of five people, including a U. S. embassy employee and her daughter, and injuries to another 45 people. All of this violence was preceded by the country's worst massacre of Christians since independence in 1947-the shooting of 18 people with AK-47 assault rifles while they worshipped at St. Dominic's Church on Oct. 28, 2001, in Bahawalpur in Punjab Province.

While these attacks have often been blamed as a response of Islamic fundamentalists in the country to the U. S.-led attack against Afghanistan in 2001, they are also a reflection of the weakness of the government of President Pervez

Musharraf, who, in spite of his immense power that includes the ability to sack the prime minister and dissolve Parliament, has not been able to command the same control over Pakistan's conservative Islamic religious parties and armed sectarian groups in the same way that he has the government.

It is not that Musharraf has not tried, however. In August 2001, he banned two militant organisations and prohibited fund-raising to promote jihad, or holy war. In addition, he enacted laws to regulate the madrassahs, or religious schools, that are thought to provide the training grounds for Islamic militants. He also ordered that key leaders of several religious political parties or organisations be placed under house arrest for several months, including Maulana Fazal Rehman of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI). Lastly, he ordered a crackdown against Islamic groups on Jan. 12, 2003. In spite of these efforts, however, the violence against the country's religious minorities has continued.

This impotence on the part of the government though is partly of its own making, for these attacks against Pakistan's religious minorities are also a reflection of history in which previous prime ministers and presidents have sought to gain the support of religious parties by passing laws or implementing policies that discriminate against religious minorities, such as the decree of Prime Minister Z. A. Bhutto in 1974 that Ahmadiyyas are non-Muslims and the Islamic laws of President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq during his 10 years of repressive rule beginning in 1978. The latter, which also apply to Christians and other religious minorities, include the Law of Evidence that requires two non-Muslim witnesses when one Muslim witness is stipulated and the blasphemy law, a capital offence that has been misused since its promulgation in 1985 against non-Muslims in usually property disputes or other personal quarrels. This deference to the conservative religious parties has taken place in spite of their lack of support from the people at the ballot box until the October 2002 election when the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal Pakistan (MMA), a coalition of six religious parties, won control of the provincial Parliaments in Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan and acquired 11.3 percent of the seats at the national level, making them the third largest party in Parliament.

These developments defy the constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and protections granted to minorities and undermine the vision for a secular and tolerant society of the founding figure of Pakistan, the revered Quaid-i-Azam (Great Leader), Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

They are furthermore a disservice to Islam itself. In building the community of Medina, religious diversity was recognised and respected by the Prophet Muhammad who assured Christians in Najran of these foundations of the society he was creating:

"Najran has the protection of God and the pledges of Muhammad, the Prophet, to protect their lives, faith, land, property, those who are absent and those who are present and their clan and allies. They need not change anything of their past customs. No right of theirs or their religion shall be altered. No bishop, monk or church guard shall be removed from his position."

Unless the government of Pakistan is willing to arrest, prosecute and sentence upon conviction those who attack and discriminate against the country's minority communities, the deaths of the seven Christian workers of Idara in September 2002 will, sadly, not be the last members of Pakistan's religious minorities to be killed by those who claim to be faithful to Islam. For this plight upon the nation and Islam to be reversed, two changes must occur: (1) the government must uphold
the protections granted in the Constitution and enforce the law and (2) the people of Pakistan, especially its majority religious community, must stand up to denounce this violence against Pakistan's minorities and must take steps to protect those who are now facing discrimination. Unless this transformation of society takes place, Pakistan will continue to be a land where the law is mere rhetoric and no one is safe.