Pakistan: The Trial

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Pakistan's Christians are routinely hounded and treated as unwanted aliens by their Muslim countrymen. But Christianity's presence in this land is older than Islam's, its growth among South Asian peoples forming just as rich a tableau of chance, circumstance and historical imperative as any other religion. A panoramic overview by Usman Ahmad

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: The Friday Times
By Usman Ahmad | April 12, 2013

A small community of Pakistani Christians attend a service on Easter Sunday. Their local church is a functional nondescript square of concrete. The only concession to its status as a place of worship is a dreary red cross erected above it. However, once inside, visitors are greeted with exquisitely vibrant forms of worship and local aesthetics. The dim inner sanctum is lit by gentle candlelight as worshippers adorned in an array of colors and striking patterns sing hymns in full voices and with outstretched arms. Even the walls are bedecked with white and gold drapery. Some of the women and children have crosses painted on their hands with henna, which are made noticeable during the prayer at the end of the service.

Most of the congregation possess only a rudimentary knowledge of their faith. "We are told that today is the day our God came back to life so we are happy," says one worshipper. These hopeful words chime with Easter's message of joy and renewed optimism. But, as devotees like these and others throughout Pakistan gathered just under a fortnight ago to commemorate the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, they could be forgiven for looking to the future with trepidation rather than hope.

Even by Pakistan's standard for religious intolerance, this year has been especially bad for the country's Christians. The latest tragic incident was an arson attack on hundreds of Christian homes in Joseph colony, Lahore, after an accusation of blasphemy was made against a sanitation worker.

What started as a drunken altercation between two friends in one of Pakistan's most chaotic cities ended in a large-scale riot, with a mob of almost 3,000 people ransacking and burning a Christian neighborhood.

Not a single household was spared.

The devastation merely represents another signpost in the precipitous retreat of Christians to the nether regions of Pakistani society. Though politicians and the great and the good of Pakistan may speak in support of their "brothers and sisters" whenever such incidents rear their ugly head, the deeper truth masked beneath this faux sympathy is that members of the community find themselves aliens in a land they have lived in for centuries.

Christianity's presence in this timeless expanse may not be as old as the proverbial hills, but it has a long history which pre-dates the arrival of Islam and even many traditions within Hinduism - the most ancient of the sub-continent's religions.

The earliest source for Christianity's presence in Asia is an ancient Syriac text, The Acts of Thomas. It reports that the Apostles in Jerusalem divided the world between them with the task of proselytizing in India falling to the eponymous saint, more commonly known to posterity as 'Doubting Thomas' for his refusal to believe in the resurrection of Christ until he had verified it himself.

Despite his initial unease, Thomas came to India in A.D. 52 aboard a Roman trading vessel to spread the faith among settlers of the Jewish Diaspora in Kerala. Once there, his missionary activities lasted for almost twenty years, during which time he established seven Churches and converted 3,000 followers to the message of Christ. He is supposed to have had a penchant for the spectacular and would often delve into the realm of miracles by bringing the dead to life and uttering wondrous prophecies. Such was the renown of his feats in the region that they were mentioned in the writings of the Venetian merchant traveler Marco Polo and famously dramatized in Geoffrey Chaucer's poem, Summoner's Tale.

Modern scholarship may now deride the idea of Thomas in India as nothing more than a romantic fable, yet when 16th century Portuguese priests arrived there to preach the Gospel they found well-established indigenous communities, known as Malabar Christians, who stridently claimed to have been Christianized by Thomas himself.

After a period of friendly overtures, the Portuguese began a concerted and at times ruthless campaign to bring the locals under the obedience of the imperial crown and the Church of Rome. In 1599, the Synod of Diamper, convened by the Archbishop of Goa, Alexio de Meneses, finally managed to achieve this and Latinized the Malabar liturgy and introduced the Inquisition. Clerics began to be recruited from Europe, and the concept of priestly celibacy was locally decreed for the first time.

The years thereafter witnessed a great deal of toing-and-froing as Malabar Christians repeatedly broke free from Roman rule only to be forcibly restored to it. Through it all, however, they showed a remarkable resilience in preserving their distinctive rites and practices against a foreign orthodoxy and also the danger of assimilation into the ever-present masses of Hinduism.

Christianity's next great expansion came through the proselytizing of Anglican missionaries who accompanied the British Empire and the zeal of legions of servicemen and civil servants who resolved to carry out a mission of spiritual improvement by spreading their faith. The growth of the religion during British rule was unprecedented in scale. Education, publishing and coordinated mass-movements of conversion were all utilized to spread the teachings of Christ among the Indian population. The message found particular resonance among low-caste "untouchables" such as sweepers and hide-workers. Others were won over by what they saw as a superior culture and enthusiastically embraced Christianity along with tweed suits, afternoon tea and cricket. As a result, during the peak years of British rule, the Christian population increased a hundred-fold in Punjab alone.

With the exit of the British came the creation of Pakistan in 1947. Its founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, envisaged a progressive and pluralistic society which would be Muslim in character while giving equal rights and freedoms to all other groups and communities. In his first address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan Jinnah said, "You may belong to any religion, caste or creed. That has nothing to do with the business of the state. In due course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims - not in a religious sense, for that is the personal faith of an individual - but in the political sense as citizens of one state."

Christians such as the newspaper editor and propagandist Pothan Joseph helped create Jinnah's Pakistan, and figures such as Chief Justice A.R. Cornelius strove to uphold it. The general Christian populace displayed their loyalty and faith in the idea of Pakistan by choosing to remain in the country even as the majority of Sikhs and Hindus trekked east into India at Partition.

It wasn't long, however, before religion in Pakistan was dangerously politicised. The regime of President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto began the slide by declaring Pakistan's Ahmadis to be non-Muslims. The situation deteriorated further under General Zia, who armed Pakistan's mullahs and gave them a seat at the high tables of foreign and domestic policy. Zia's rule saw the introduction of the Hudood laws, the promulgation of the Ahmadi-specific Ordinance XX, and drastic changes to the existing blasphemy laws which prescribed a term of life imprisonment for anyone who defiled a copy of the Holy Quran and death for anyone who insulted the Holy Prophet (PBUH).

For Pakistan's Christians and indeed many other minority groups the blasphemy law remains Zia's most pernicious legacy. The cases of Shahid Masih, Asiah Bibi and the tragic suicide of the Right Rev John Joseph in protest against a court's decision to sentence a fellow Christian to death for committing blasphemy all illustrate the menacing nature of these statutes. In addition, ever since the law was amended, those who are accused of blasphemy constantly live under threat of violence. In the past twenty years or so extrajudicial judicial killings have claimed the lives of 16 Christians accused of blasphemy, and violent mobs have repeatedly attacked Christian neighbourhoods after similar allegations - in Gojra and now Joseph Colony.

Social division is not just caused by religion and politics. Christians are routinely discriminated against in the employment sector and the jobs that are available to them are usually menial and low-paid. This is a roadblock to their upward social mobility. Moreover, it reinforces the public perception of Christians as little more that sweepers and sanitation workers.

Even in the midst of all their troubles, all the bloodshed, misery and despair, the Christian community has shown remarkable fortitude. Not once has violence been met with violence or bigotry confronted with hate. A perfect example of this was the response to the attack in Joseph Colony, which saw peaceful demonstrations and vigils demanding better protection rather than retribution.

Contact the author at usmanhotspur@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @Usman_Ahmad82



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