Always under pressure

Now condemned, the latest incidents of church burning in Pakistan are indicative of a continuing deeper pressure Christian communities face.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A crowd of people inspect fire damaged debris outside a burnt-out church.

The aftermath of a mob attack that burnt-out a church in Jaranwala, Pakistan.

Tearfund.

The pressure is once again rising for the four million Christians living in Pakistan.

Earlier this month a crowd of thousands angrily descended upon the city of Jaranwala in North-Eastern Punjab, an area with a notably high population of Christian residents. The mob set fire to (at least) four churches, burned Bibles in the streets, vandalised a cemetery, and looted numerous homes believed to be owned by Christian families. Social media and news outlets are brimming with videos of these attacks taking place in broad daylight; people can be heard cheering and chanting as churches are set alight, while police officers seemingly stand by and watch the chaos unfold.

These attacks were triggered by allegations that two Christians in Jaranwala had set fire to a Qur’an, thus breaking Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws and insulting Islam. There is little evidence to suggest that this crime was committed by Christians, only that burnt and vandalised pages of the Qur’an were found scattered near this Christian community. Although the allegations therefore remain heavily disputed, the consequences that the Christian community have suffered have been severe.

Despite this being one of the most destructive incidents in the country’s history, there are thankfully no reports of injuries or fatalities, as it is reported that the Christian residents were forewarned and therefore able to evacuate their homes in time. Nevertheless, the damage done to the community in Jaranwala is profound. Both Christians and Muslims alike have widely and vehemently condemned the violence directed at the Christian community in Pakistan, with Muslim leaders refusing to allow such violence to be carried out in the name of Islam.

The depths of distress

The Right Reverend Azad Marshall, Bishop of a neighbouring city, has responded, stating that the Christian community throughout Pakistan are ‘traumatised’, ‘deeply pained’ and ‘distressed’. Bishop Azas has therefore called for ‘justice and action’ and an assurance that ‘our (Christian) lives are valuable in our own homeland’. Bishop Azad’s words imply that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the pain and devastation caused to the Christian community is multifaceted.

The first layer of distress is the most obvious: the practical implications of these attacks continue to face this community and are a source of ongoing distress. Whole families are sleeping on the streets, their homes no longer safe, surrounded by the rubble of their beloved churches and the ash of their burnt Bibles. In response to the mass destruction, over one hundred men who are thought to have been involved in carrying out and/or inciting the riots have been arrested and detained. What’s more, the Pakistani government have handed out $6,800 as compensation to each Christian household affected, this is reported to be over one hundred Christian families in total.

And yet, the words pouring out from Christians in Pakistan, so often echoing the words of Bishop Azad, speak of another level of pain and distress. This pain is pertaining to the lack of safety and value they experience in their own home as a result of their Christian identity. Such damage is not so easily compensated.

Continual and extreme persecution

Pakistan is a majority Muslim country, with the four million Christians making up just 1.9 per cent of the population. According to the charity Open Doors, which monitors such incidents and who have placed Pakistan in eighth place on their World Watch List, the persecution that Christians face as a minority people group in the country is both continual and extreme. As well as the one-off incidents, such as the deadly attack of a church in 2017, which killed at least nine individuals, Christians in the country are subject to ‘a silent epidemic of kidnappings, forced marriages and forced conversion of Christian girls and women’.

The Prime Minister has attempted to quell the deepest fears being vocalised by Pakistani Christians by vowing that his government will work to ensure their safety as a minority group. However, what is being highlighted in Pakistan is how a Christian identity can place on in the epicentre of political tension. We’re reminded once again that religious persecution can, and does, ensure that people feel unsafe and undervalued, unwelcome in their home countries. What is it like to live under the pressure of political extremists stirring up hatred toward you as a result of your beliefs? What must it feel like to feel such a tension in the country you call home? This is a daily reality for not only the 2 million Christians living in Pakistan, but the 360 million Christians who are living in persecution worldwide.

Column

Comment

Middle East

War & peace

2 October 2024

4 min read

‘The silent stars go by’, mocking the Middle East peace process

Where are today’s witnesses to peace in the Holy Lands?

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

Dots of light, caused by missles, fall across a night sky above the city

Iranian missiles above Jerusalem.

BBC News.

The evil shooting stars of ballistic weaponry over Jerusalem would have been clearly visible from Bethlehem, just to the south of the capital in the occupied West Bank, last Monday evening.

“Above thy deep and dreamless sleep/ the silent stars go by” goes the children’s Christmas carol. Nothing deep and dreamless about sleep in the little town of Bethlehem just now. Those deadly Iranian-dispatched stars were silent enough, until their alignment with Israeli ones in the Iron Dome. Then “Whump!” as each star collapsed, leaving a black hole in the night sky.

How depressing that these shining stars of violence and hatred should hang in the same sky that, it is said, hosted the star to mark the birthplace of the Prince of Peace. Depressing but not surprising. The Christ child grew up to foretell to Jerusalem that “the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you.”

He predicted his own death in Jerusalem. And, for sure, the Christ is still being crucified there, every time a man, woman or child loses their life to that violence and hatred, there or in the surrounding region.

Where are wiser counsels this week, witnesses to peace in the Holy Lands? The legend has it that magi followed the messianic star to the stable. Who looks to these different stars in the night sky this week and asks what they mean?

Iran’s hardliners, under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, can’t countenance a dove with an olive twig.

It’s a bit of a stretch to apply the status of magus to Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s new reformist president who had just been sworn in when he watched the rockets launched. His only similarity with the magi may be that he watched those travelling stars in the sky from an eastern perspective.

But Pezeshkian has, at least, tried to talk of the possibility of peace, among a Middle-Eastern cast who can only speak of war. He arrived back in Iran from the UN general assembly, where he had declared that Iran is “ready to lay down its arms if Israel lays down its arms.” He added: “We want to live in peace.”

Even if it’s not the wolf living with the lamb, or the leopard lying down with the kid, it does at least envisage a time when an Israeli wolf may lie down with the Iranian leopard. But Iran’s hardliners, under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, can’t countenance a dove with an olive twig. They’re consumed with vengeance for Israel’s killing of their putative military leader, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, in Lebanon. And death must always be followed by more death in this scenario.

Followers of the Nazarene into Jerusalem committed to something very different, a defeat of death as a weapon of despair. Two millennia later, we might expect leaders of a western world founded on the principles of those first followers to speak to peace as the overriding priority for the lands from which their religion derives.

To draw the West into a war with Iran in defence of Israel. A re-elected president Donald Trump would be a useful dupe for this ploy...

Not a bit of it. Peace in the Holy Lands doesn’t even sound like a strategic aim for the West anymore. On the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US Army general David Petraeus asked: “Tell me how this ends?” No such foresight today. The all-consuming desire seems solely to show that we’re on Israel’s side, come what may.

President Joe Biden responded to Iran’s aerial attack by saying that the US is “fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel”. For his part, prime minister Keir Starmer declared that “Britain stands full square” with Israel and supports its “reasonable demand for the security of its people.” Admirable sentiments, but they don’t point to peace any time soon, so long as they encourage Israel (or anyone else) to escalate conflict.

In some quarters, this is held to be deliberate Israeli policy: To draw the West into a war with Iran in defence of Israel. A re-elected president Donald Trump would be a useful dupe for this ploy, abetted in part by the more extreme ends of the US Christian Right, for whom Israel must be protected at all costs as the locus for the second coming of the Christ. So, war with Iran is Armageddon, the great conflict of the End Times.

These are truly terrifying prospects. For the time being, it’s possibly enough to note that the president of Iran speaks more about peace than the West currently does. Given that the West is supposed to represent the legacy virtues of Christendom, that is in turn alarming.

That Bethlehem carol goes on to note “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.” As we raise our eyes to the fearsome lights in the night sky over Israel, we might wonder whether, when it comes to peace, silence from Christian nations is really enough.