ICC Note:
Muhammad Akram, a Muslim in Pakistan who attacked a church as a teen, is now working to promote interfaith dialogue among Pakistan’s youth. At age 15, Akram attacked and vandalized a local church in his town after a Christian was falsely accused of blasphemy. Since then, Akram has regretted his actions that day and is now seeking ways he can teach others to avoid such needless violence. Will the work of Akram help change Pakistan’s future with religious freedom? 
01/24/2017 Pakistan (Asia News) – Muhammad Akram was a teen when he attacked the Catholic Church in his home town. Now he promotes interfaith dialogue, starting with young people.
The university student was only 15 when he vandalized the Holy Spirit Church in Sangla Hill in Punjab, as a member of an angry mob of Muslims who wanted to punish the alleged desecration of the Qurʾān by a Christian.
“Now I apologies to everyone,” he told Asia News. “I did it only because my friends and acquaintances were damaging the property (church).”
Akram spoke yesterday in Lahore at the annual dinner of the Youth Development Foundation (YDF), an organization set up in 2010 in which he is a member. As one of 1,600 young people who trained with the foundation last year, he wants to effect change in Pakistani society with young people from every religious background.
The student took part in the action that devastated Holy Spirit Church in the Christian village of Sangla Hill.
On 12 November 2005, about 2,000 people looted and set fire to Christian properties in the village. The latter included three churches, a convent, two Catholic schools, the homes of a Protestant clergyman and a parish priest, a girls’ hostel, a dispensary run by nuns and some private homes.
The attack was motivated by the false rumour that Yousaf Masih, a local Christian, had burnt pages of the Qurʾān, an act that is punishable by death in Pakistan in accordance with the country’s blasphemy law.
Akram mentioned the sad fate of the Christian man, a semi-illiterate farmworker who was cleared of all charges and yet forced to abandon the village for fear of retaliation. He died a few years later alone, hidden somewhere.
The Muslim student is repentant of his actions and is currently on a tour to raise public awareness about tolerance and social action. He slams proclamations in mosques, whose only purpose is to lead to confrontations.
In his view, some “people have turned religious antagonism into their stock-in-trade. There is great profit in it, and many supporters can be attracted in a short period of time.”
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