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December 8, 2005

Pakistan: Archbishop of Canterbury On Islamic Persecutions of Christians

The 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has voiced some strange opinions lately. On 23 November, he argued whilst on a trip to Pakistan that the Crusades and other Christian religious wars had been a "betrayal of belief".

Following on from that visti to Pakistan, he is now writing on the situation in Sangla Hills in the Punjab, where recently a riot erupted and Muslims attacked Christians, destroying at least three churches, a school and a priest's house. He is strangely optimistic.

As we reported at the time and later, the events came about after (unproven) claims were made that a Christian, who is now in police detention, had burned pages of the Koran. Egged on by mullahs using loudspeakers, a mob of 1,500 Muslims ransacked the small Christian community of Sangla Hill, which has had a Christian presence for more than a century.

Rowan Williams, writing in the Times today, seems to want to be positive. He writes that the event at Sangla Hill has acquired "significance" at this time. He draws attention to the blasphemy laws in Pakistan, which he naturally disagrees with, as they can invoke the death penalty. A mere accusation made after two Muslims apparently lost to a gambling partner, a Christian named Yousaf Maseh had disastrous consequences. As well as the riot, he remains in custody awaiting trial, knowing he faces the threat of lynching if free.

Williams points out that though many in Pakistan disapprove of the way the blasphemy laws are enacted, thelaws themselves will be hard to change without incurring the ire of the powerful Islamic conservative elements in the country. He states that Musharraf is attempting to set Pakistan up as an example of a "moderate Islamic nation", a view which was expressed to him by the Pakistan PM, Shaukat Aziz. The Sangla Hill affair is a blemish in this picture.

Williams views examples of recent Christian earthquake donations and relief work, in collaborations with Muslim groups as signs of positive progress, and says the earthquake has donated developmental money into Pakistan, which Musharraf wishes to invest into the civil society. He speaks of there being a "sense of real possibility".

It adds up to a sense that Pakistan is slowly redefining some of its ideas about citizenship. If citizenship is, even for this Islamic state, more than just membership of the umma - the worldwide community of Muslims - there are some tough questions to be sorted out. So it was not quite as surprising as it might otherwise have been to hear the Minister for Religious Affairs and Minorities apologising last week in unambiguous terms for Sangla Hills and promising a judicial inquiry. Indeed, arrests have already been made and compensation promised for the property destroyed.

Even more significantly, he has promised to explore the setting up of local Christian-Muslim consultations. At several meetings of representatives from the different communities in the past few weeks, he and others have highlighted the need to take Christian-Muslim dialogue "to the villages". The dialogue has, remarkably, begun to develop among a small number of leaders, in several areas.

Williams concludes by stating that the Christian-Muslim collaboration has been pushed a stage further by recent events. " It requires everyone to try and see what a majority looks and feels like to a minority," he writes.

I would like to think he is right, and maybe Musharraf's intentions are positive and ultimately aimed at controlling extremism by creating a moderate Islamic society. But there are immutable elements away from cities in Pakistan which seem lost in time, with cruel punishments still meted out by feudal jirgas in remote villages in the Punjab region of Pakistan and elsewhere. In these communities girls and women can be treated as worse than chattels.

Christian women face problems of rape by Muslims, which can happen to girls as young as thirteen, and often it happens as an attempt at Muslim conversion, as was the case of Riqba Masih, and even to a 12 year old girl, Sara Tabasum, who was repeatedly raped by multiple groups of men, being threatened with death if she did not convert to Islam. In each of these cases above, the families of the rape victims were all pressured by Muslims in the community to drop the case against the perpetrators, sometimes with accompanying threats of violence.

In late September, we reported on the case of a 40-year old Christian, Younis Masih, who made derogatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammad at a gathering held by another Christian in Chungi Amer Sidhu.

Younis was beaten by Christians, such is the climate of oppression, to recant his statements, which he did not. The police had him imprisoned immediately, while a mob of 200 Muslims rampaged through the town. Younis's wife was severely assaulted, and 50 Chrisian families had to flee the neighbourhood.

The climate in Pakistan is such that even minority sects of Muslims are liable for attack. Eight members of an Ahmadi or Ahmaddiyah community mosque were killed in an attack on October 7.

Musharraf may be trying to uphold "moderate Islamic values", and the Archbishop of Canterbury listened eagerly to these ideas during his visit. But the Archbishop stated that the process of change would take a decade at least to achieve.

Governments come and go, or are overthrown, the way Musharraf came to power in 2001, but for people living in small villages and communities, away from the bright lights of Islamabad, there is an older more feudal society which clings tenaciously to values which are almost medieval.

For others in Pakistan there are still memories of partition, and inter faith-battles between Muslims and Hindus which happened in increasing number in the years leading up to 1947. The origins of these battles of faith have been festering through nearly five hundred years of the Indian sub-continent's history, since the arrival of the Mughal (Muslim) rulers.

Christians comprise only 3% of the predominantly Muslim population in Pakistan, yet they are suffering stigmatisation and physical attacks which are far more aggressive and violent than any currently endured by the Muslim 3% of the predominantly non-Muslim population in Britain.

Neither Musharraf nor his ideas of a new society will mean that much to the masses in the hinterland. So for Christians actually living in the real world of Pakistan, the situation is not improving. We reported yesterday on Christians being forced to give up their homes to house victims of the earthquake.

Monday's Asia News carried an article entitled "Muslim extremists want to eliminate Christians from Sangla Hill".

In a letter to the governor of Punjab, Mgr Lawrence Saldanha, archbishop of Lahore, deplored the fact that some Muslim religious circles continue feeding Muslim hatred of Christians in Sangla Hill. The note, which was sent last Saturday, called the situation in the village "worrisome", especially now that Christmas is fast approaching.

On December 2, the leaders of some Islamic religious groups gathered at the Jamia Masjid Rizvia (mosque) for Friday prayers reaffirmed their condemnation of Yousaf Masih, a Christian man they say is guilty of desecrating the Qu'ran, and called for him to be publicly hanged.

Archbishop Saldanha demanded that the real culprits be arrested, because "to arrest the innocent (Yousaf Maseh) is counterproductive." He ended the letter with a demand for the end of Pakistan's blasphemy laws.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at December 8, 2005 7:16 PM

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