ICC Note:

Sunday’s bombing of a park in Pakistan where Christians were celebrating Easter has brought the suffering of Pakistani Christians into the focus of the international media. Yet the suffering of Christians in Pakistan is nothing new. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has recommended that Pakistan be designated a “Country of Particular Concern” due to widespread abuses suffered by the country’s religious minorities. In Pakistan, Christians and other religious minorities are often targeted by extremists wielding the country’s notorious blasphemy laws and a radical theology that teaches religious minorities are not equal to Sunni Muslims. Is there hope that Pakistan will ever change? 

4/1/2016 Pakistan (The Wall Street Journal) – Being a Christian in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan can be risky. On Easter Sunday, a suicide bomber targeted picnickers in a popular park in Lahore, killing 74 people, 29 of them children.

Only about one-fifth of those killed were Christian, but a representative of Jamaat ul-Ahrar, an offshoot of the Pakistani Taliban, left no doubt about the intended target. “We claim responsibility for the attack on the Christians as they were celebrating their religious festival,” said the terrorist spokesman.

On the same day, thousands of angry followers of the Barelvi sect swarmed Islamabad to protest the February execution of convicted assassin Mumtaz Qadri. The protestors view Qadri as a hero of the faith for murdering Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer five years ago.

Mr. Taseer made the mistake of publicly showing compassion toward Asia Bibi, an illiterate Christian woman who faced a death sentence for allegedly insulting the prophet Muhammad. Last year Pakistan’s Supreme Court suspended Ms. Bibi’s sentence, but she remains in prison.

Christians number less than 2% of Pakistan’s 180 million people. Still, the tiny community has become a bellwether for the country’s future.

A Pakistan that fails to protect its Christians can be expected to do even less to defend other vulnerable religious minorities, such as Ahmadiyya Muslims and Hindus. As long as Pakistan’s Christians remain under attack, the world will find it difficult to buy the military’s argument that its 22-month-old effort to stamp out terrorism is working.

Pakistan has never exactly been a haven of religious tolerance. The constitution establishes Islam as the state religion, and mandates that laws be consistent with the faith. The U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom lists Pakistan as a country of particular concern, along with such paragons of freedom as North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

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