WASHINGTON -- International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that radical Muslims running a tea stall beat a Christian man to death for using a cup designated for Muslims on May 9. The young man, Ishtiaq Masih, had ordered tea at a roadside stall in Machharkay village, Punjab, Pakistan, after his bus stopped to allow passengers to relieve themselves.
When Ishtiaq went to pay for his tea, the owner noticed that he was wearing a necklace with a cross and grabbed him, calling for his employees to bring anything available to beat him for violating a sign posted on the stall warning non-Muslims to declare their religion before being served. Ishtiaq had not noticed the warning sign before ordering his tea, as he ordered with a group of his fellow passengers.
The owner and 14 of his employees beat Ishtiaq with stones, iron rods and clubs, and stabbed him multiple times with kitchen knives as Ishtiaq pleaded for mercy.
The other bus passengers and other passers-by finally intervened and took Ishtiaq to the Rural Health Center in the village. There Ishtiaq died as a result of spinal, head, and chest injuries. The doctor who took Ishtiaq's case told ICC that Ishtiaq had excessive internal and external bleeding, a fractured skull, and brain injuries.
Makah Tea Stall is located on the Sukheki-Lahore highway and is owned by Mubarak Ali, a 42-year-old radical Muslim. ICC's correspondent visited the tea stall and observed that a large red warning sign with a death's head symbol was posted which read, "All non-Muslims should introduce their faith prior to ordering tea. This tea stall serves Muslims only." The warning also threatened anyone who violated the rule with "dire consequences."
A neighboring shopkeeper told ICC on condition of anonymity that Ali is a fundamentalist Muslim and all his employees are former students of radical Muslim madrassas (seminaries). Ali kept separate sets of cooking-ware for Muslims and non-Muslims at his stall.
Ishtiaq's family said that they immediately reported the incident to the police and filed a case against Ali. Though the police registered their case, no action has been taken to apprehend Ali or his employees.
When ICC asked the Pindi Bhatian Saddar police station about the murder, the police chief said that investigations were underway and they are treating it as a faith-based murder by biased Muslims. When asked about Ali's warning sign, police chief Muhammad Iftikhar Bajwa claimed that he could not take it down.
However, the constitution of Pakistan explicitly prohibits such discrimination, and the police could take strong action against the warning sign. But because the police are also Muslim, Ishtiaq's father claims that they are being derelict in their duties to prosecute the murderers who are still freely operating the tea stall.
(International Christian Concern)
Friday, June 12, 2009
Muslims Attack Pakistani Pastor’s Home, Relatives
After shooting into air, assailants strike mother, sister-in-law with rifle butts.
LAHORE, Pakistan, June 12 (Compass Direct News) – In a growing culture of violence here, a traffic incident in Punjab Province this month led to Muslim assailants later mounting an attack on the home of a Christian pastor they have increasingly resented for his evangelism and justice ministries. The attackers threatened more violence if the pastor does not drop assault charges.
A few of the 17 assailants struck the mother and sister-in-law of pastor Riaz Masih with rifle butts after the pastor’s brother, who lives at the same multi-housing complex as Masih in Kila Sardar Shah, Sheikhupura district, on June 1 complained to a local councilor about the official nearly driving into his sons. Christian leaders said the roadside incident was only the fuse igniting hostilities that have grown due to meetings held by Christ for All Nations Ministries (CANM).
The meetings have attracted many youths, including some Muslims. Pastor Masih is national coordinator of CANM, a self-supported church-planting ministry. Saqib Munawar, chairman of CANM, said the attack on the pastor’s home in the remote village is an indication that as Islamic extremism rises amid a military attempt to flush Islamic militants from the Swat Valley in the country’s northwest, a growing culture of violence means minor incidents more easily erupt into attacks.
“As the Swat operation is going on, hostilities against Christians are on the rise,” Munawar said. “Extremism, which has flourished in the last few decades, is now creating problems for all Pakistanis. This attitude has promoted violence in the country.”
Pakistanis are becoming more violent, he said, and extremism has increased partially in response to evangelism efforts by Christians, he said.
In the triggering incident, pastor Masih’s 17- and 18-year-old nephews were standing on the side of a road with their backs to traffic in Kila Sardar Shah when Malik Younus, a village councilor, passed in a vehicle that nearly struck them. The teenagers immediately complained to Younus that he should have at least honked to warn them to step aside.
Younus got out of his vehicle and beat them, Munawar said. They complained to their father, Mushtaq Masih, who then called Younus. Younus threatened to beat them again, and Mushtaq Masih responded that he would have no choice but to call police. Younus became furious, according to Munawar.
Within an hour Younus, his brother Malik Falak Sher and 15 other men armed with automatic weapons and wooden clubs arrived at the multi-family complex where Pastor Masih and his brothers live with their families. The pastor was some distance from home when his 12-year-old daughter called and told him that the Muslim attackers were outside firing into the air.
Rushing to the scene, Masih approached the house from the backyard as the assailants were breaking down the main gate. The pastor managed to lock himself with members of his family inside a room, but his sister-in-law – wife of his younger brother Ilias Masih – and his mother were outside at the time.
Having broken down the main gate and wall and had entered the courtyard, the assailants struck the two women with rifle butts and demanded to know where the boys and their father were. Pastor’s Masih’s brother, Mushtaq Masih, had also locked himself and his family in a room. The attackers were trying to break down the doors of rooms in pastor Masih’s home when one of them called off the assault and they left.
The family reported the assault to police, but officers have done nothing as they have close ties with the attackers – and the assailants also have links with various local government leaders, Munawar said. The intruding Muslims warned pastor Masih and his family that if they contacted police and media, they would face “retribution.”
The Station House Officer told Compass that Younus and his cohorts had been released on bail; he would not comment further.
Munawar said the Masih families will likely seek a settlement instead of jail terms.
“The family will probably go for an out-of-court settlement, as they have to live,” he said. “However, fears are that such flare-ups may hit back, which would certainly hamper our evangelical efforts.”
Rumors spread that a former member of the Punjab Assembly, Agha Gull, was involved in the traffic incident, but Gull told Compass that he was in Iraq at the time of the incident and had nothing to do with it. Gull said someone told him that a clash took place on the road, but that “none of the parties came to me.”
Justice Ministry
Certain that the remote village Muslims would not have access to Compass news, pastor Masih told Compass that the antagonists were upset with him also over his efforts to take back lands stolen from Christian families. There are four Christian families in the village of 40 to 50 families.
The Christian villagers had paid for land they have lived on since 1989, but they never received documents for the transfer, leaving the real estate in the hands of Muslim businessman Syed Izhar Shah – whom villagers say is involved in land theft in collaboration with those who instigated the June 1 attack, Younus and his brother Sher.
Last year pastor Masih offered 20,000 rupees (US$250) to the landowner to legally transfer the property with proper documentation, but the owner declined. Pastor Masih’s father has also paid some 10,000 rupees for his share of the land. Additionally, Akram Masih, who heads one of the four Christian families in the area, has paid an additional 27,000 rupees (US$335) in an effort to legally obtain his share of the land, but the landowner forbid him to take possession as well.
Younus and Sher are behind a land-grab designed to drive the few Christian families from the area, pastor Masih said. They have illegally taken over a nearby, eight-acre tract of land zoned for a housing tract called Royal Town. Christian villagers had paid for this land also in 1989 – and also without receiving documentation – and the legal land owner, Syed Izhar Shah, is pressuring them to either pay the current price or leave the village, pastor Masih said.
“The attack has been unleashed on the weakest, because there are only four Christian families living in this village,” said pastor Masih. “They are vexing us so that we leave the area.”
Pastor Munawar said that anti-Christian hostilities resulted in the cancellation of CANM’s youth program, which was scheduled for last Monday (June 8).
“The fate of our next program, scheduled on June 21, is also hanging in balance,” he said.
Munawar added that last year’s annual youth program, held in May, had been secured by armed Christians after an area Muslim tipped them off that their worship could be targeted. The guards were provided licensed .222 Remington rifles.
(Compass Direct)
LAHORE, Pakistan, June 12 (Compass Direct News) – In a growing culture of violence here, a traffic incident in Punjab Province this month led to Muslim assailants later mounting an attack on the home of a Christian pastor they have increasingly resented for his evangelism and justice ministries. The attackers threatened more violence if the pastor does not drop assault charges.
A few of the 17 assailants struck the mother and sister-in-law of pastor Riaz Masih with rifle butts after the pastor’s brother, who lives at the same multi-housing complex as Masih in Kila Sardar Shah, Sheikhupura district, on June 1 complained to a local councilor about the official nearly driving into his sons. Christian leaders said the roadside incident was only the fuse igniting hostilities that have grown due to meetings held by Christ for All Nations Ministries (CANM).
The meetings have attracted many youths, including some Muslims. Pastor Masih is national coordinator of CANM, a self-supported church-planting ministry. Saqib Munawar, chairman of CANM, said the attack on the pastor’s home in the remote village is an indication that as Islamic extremism rises amid a military attempt to flush Islamic militants from the Swat Valley in the country’s northwest, a growing culture of violence means minor incidents more easily erupt into attacks.
“As the Swat operation is going on, hostilities against Christians are on the rise,” Munawar said. “Extremism, which has flourished in the last few decades, is now creating problems for all Pakistanis. This attitude has promoted violence in the country.”
Pakistanis are becoming more violent, he said, and extremism has increased partially in response to evangelism efforts by Christians, he said.
In the triggering incident, pastor Masih’s 17- and 18-year-old nephews were standing on the side of a road with their backs to traffic in Kila Sardar Shah when Malik Younus, a village councilor, passed in a vehicle that nearly struck them. The teenagers immediately complained to Younus that he should have at least honked to warn them to step aside.
Younus got out of his vehicle and beat them, Munawar said. They complained to their father, Mushtaq Masih, who then called Younus. Younus threatened to beat them again, and Mushtaq Masih responded that he would have no choice but to call police. Younus became furious, according to Munawar.
Within an hour Younus, his brother Malik Falak Sher and 15 other men armed with automatic weapons and wooden clubs arrived at the multi-family complex where Pastor Masih and his brothers live with their families. The pastor was some distance from home when his 12-year-old daughter called and told him that the Muslim attackers were outside firing into the air.
Rushing to the scene, Masih approached the house from the backyard as the assailants were breaking down the main gate. The pastor managed to lock himself with members of his family inside a room, but his sister-in-law – wife of his younger brother Ilias Masih – and his mother were outside at the time.
Having broken down the main gate and wall and had entered the courtyard, the assailants struck the two women with rifle butts and demanded to know where the boys and their father were. Pastor’s Masih’s brother, Mushtaq Masih, had also locked himself and his family in a room. The attackers were trying to break down the doors of rooms in pastor Masih’s home when one of them called off the assault and they left.
The family reported the assault to police, but officers have done nothing as they have close ties with the attackers – and the assailants also have links with various local government leaders, Munawar said. The intruding Muslims warned pastor Masih and his family that if they contacted police and media, they would face “retribution.”
The Station House Officer told Compass that Younus and his cohorts had been released on bail; he would not comment further.
Munawar said the Masih families will likely seek a settlement instead of jail terms.
“The family will probably go for an out-of-court settlement, as they have to live,” he said. “However, fears are that such flare-ups may hit back, which would certainly hamper our evangelical efforts.”
Rumors spread that a former member of the Punjab Assembly, Agha Gull, was involved in the traffic incident, but Gull told Compass that he was in Iraq at the time of the incident and had nothing to do with it. Gull said someone told him that a clash took place on the road, but that “none of the parties came to me.”
Justice Ministry
Certain that the remote village Muslims would not have access to Compass news, pastor Masih told Compass that the antagonists were upset with him also over his efforts to take back lands stolen from Christian families. There are four Christian families in the village of 40 to 50 families.
The Christian villagers had paid for land they have lived on since 1989, but they never received documents for the transfer, leaving the real estate in the hands of Muslim businessman Syed Izhar Shah – whom villagers say is involved in land theft in collaboration with those who instigated the June 1 attack, Younus and his brother Sher.
Last year pastor Masih offered 20,000 rupees (US$250) to the landowner to legally transfer the property with proper documentation, but the owner declined. Pastor Masih’s father has also paid some 10,000 rupees for his share of the land. Additionally, Akram Masih, who heads one of the four Christian families in the area, has paid an additional 27,000 rupees (US$335) in an effort to legally obtain his share of the land, but the landowner forbid him to take possession as well.
Younus and Sher are behind a land-grab designed to drive the few Christian families from the area, pastor Masih said. They have illegally taken over a nearby, eight-acre tract of land zoned for a housing tract called Royal Town. Christian villagers had paid for this land also in 1989 – and also without receiving documentation – and the legal land owner, Syed Izhar Shah, is pressuring them to either pay the current price or leave the village, pastor Masih said.
“The attack has been unleashed on the weakest, because there are only four Christian families living in this village,” said pastor Masih. “They are vexing us so that we leave the area.”
Pastor Munawar said that anti-Christian hostilities resulted in the cancellation of CANM’s youth program, which was scheduled for last Monday (June 8).
“The fate of our next program, scheduled on June 21, is also hanging in balance,” he said.
Munawar added that last year’s annual youth program, held in May, had been secured by armed Christians after an area Muslim tipped them off that their worship could be targeted. The guards were provided licensed .222 Remington rifles.
(Compass Direct)
Peshawar diocese continues support of displaced persons following terrorist surge
[Episcopal News Service] The Diocese of Peshawar's ongoing relief efforts in Pakistan continued this week with a coordinated evacuation of Christian families from Malakand following a surge in terrorist activity and the intense military operation against the Taliban in the Swat valley and neighboring districts.The evacuation was led by a diocesan survey team that visited St. George's Church in Malakand, located in the north of Peshawar, to assess the needs of local Christians. It is the most recent example of the diocese's commitment to embrace internally displaced persons (IDPs) and its concern for the wellbeing of a terrorized community.
"The area is under curfew, shops are closed, medical services are not available, and there is no transportation," said a news release from the Diocese of Peshawar, which forms part of the Church of Pakistan, a united ecumenical church and one of 38 provinces in the Anglican Communion.
The evacuees in Malakand were 18 Christian families that had been granted special travel permission by the Pakistan armed forces. They were transported by bus from Malakand to Mardan, where they have joined a further 43 families that are being provided with food, shelter and medical care in the Diocesan Relief Camp at the Christian Vocational Training Center.
USAID estimates that more than two million people have been forced out of their homes since the fighting intensified in early May.
Many of the displaced have similar horrifying stories to that of 45-year-old Shamoun Masih, a resident of Malakand who now lives with his family at the Diocesan Relief Camp. After the Taliban enforced Shariah Islamic law in Malakand, Masih succumbed to their authority for the safety of his family, according to the diocese's newsletter. He pulled his children out of school and forced his wife to stay at home. With the support of the diocesan development and relief team, Masih and his family were able to leave the war-torn area.
According to reports, Pakistani security forces have announced that more than 1,300 militants and 100 soldiers have been killed during a six-week operation to drive insurgents from the Swat Valley and neighboring districts.
The military operation commenced only two months after a peace deal was signed between the Pakistan Government and Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law), a Pakistani militant group in Swat. Despite the peace deal, the incursion of the Taliban in the Buner district caused the situation to deteriorate.
Within 24 hours on June 10-11, 66 terrorists were killed and nine apprehended in the Malakand, Bunnu and South Waziristan districts, according to a statement on Pakistan's Inter Services Public Relations website.
Meanwhile, United Nations aid workers were evacuated from Peshawar on June 10 after a terrorist bomb attack on one of the city's top hotels killed 11 people and wounded 70. Two U.N. staff members were among the dead.
In addition to the diocese's relief work with the IDPs, free medical care services are being arranged through the Diocesan Mission Hospital in Peshawar. Episcopal Relief and Development is partnering with the Diocese of Peshawar in its relief efforts.
-- Matthew Davies is editor of Episcopal Life Online and international correspondent of the Episcopal News Service.
(Episcopal Life)
Monday, June 8, 2009
Christian Man Raped and Murdered for Refusing Islam
WASHINGTON -- International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that a young Christian man from Pakistan was caught in a compromising situation with the daughter of a radical Muslim family but refused to convert to Islam despite her insistence and the threats of her three brothers. On May 15, the young man's father found his dead body near a canal in a rural Punjab village, after he had been missing for three days.
The young Christian, Litto, was studying for a Masters Degree in English when he met and fell in love with a Muslim girl from his village. During their courtship, she repeatedly attempted to entice him into becoming a Muslim.
Litto's father, Amjad Masih Ghauri, told ICC, "On May 10th, while my son and that Muslim girl, Shazia Cheema, were making love in a lonely part of the fields, her two elder Muslim brothers found them in an objectionable posture and this enraged them." Litto managed to escape the scene and ran home, telling his father everything.
The next day Shazia's three brothers arrived at Litto's house, where they demanded that Litto convert to Islam and marry their sister. Litto said he would marry her, but that he would not convert to Islam. This infuriated the brothers, who kidnapped him at gunpoint and threw him into their car.
Ghauri immediately reported to the police what had happened. In response, the officer on duty said, "How dare you Choohra (derogatory term for Christian) cast malicious eyes on a Muslim girl."
Denied help by the police, Ghauri gathered some of his relatives and searched the countryside for his son for three days until finding his body on May 15. The autopsy revealed that Litto had been sodomized, flogged, clubbed, and stabbed five times in the stomach and genitals. He died from the stab wounds. It is almost certain that during ! the four days Litto was kidnapped, he was offered land, wealth, and his girlfriend if he were to convert to Islam. It was his refusal to become a Muslim that spelled his death sentence in the eyes of these radical Muslims.
Police have filed a court case against the three brothers, but have taken no action. The three young men are roaming freely in the village and telling everyone that they have "taught a good lesson to the Choohras (derogatory term for Christians)."
It is likely that Shazia was operating at the command of her brothers to catch Litto in a compromising situation. It is common in Pakistan for Muslims to use their sisters or daughters to entice Christians to convert to Islam.
(International Christian Concern)
The young Christian, Litto, was studying for a Masters Degree in English when he met and fell in love with a Muslim girl from his village. During their courtship, she repeatedly attempted to entice him into becoming a Muslim.
Litto's father, Amjad Masih Ghauri, told ICC, "On May 10th, while my son and that Muslim girl, Shazia Cheema, were making love in a lonely part of the fields, her two elder Muslim brothers found them in an objectionable posture and this enraged them." Litto managed to escape the scene and ran home, telling his father everything.
The next day Shazia's three brothers arrived at Litto's house, where they demanded that Litto convert to Islam and marry their sister. Litto said he would marry her, but that he would not convert to Islam. This infuriated the brothers, who kidnapped him at gunpoint and threw him into their car.
Ghauri immediately reported to the police what had happened. In response, the officer on duty said, "How dare you Choohra (derogatory term for Christian) cast malicious eyes on a Muslim girl."
Denied help by the police, Ghauri gathered some of his relatives and searched the countryside for his son for three days until finding his body on May 15. The autopsy revealed that Litto had been sodomized, flogged, clubbed, and stabbed five times in the stomach and genitals. He died from the stab wounds. It is almost certain that during ! the four days Litto was kidnapped, he was offered land, wealth, and his girlfriend if he were to convert to Islam. It was his refusal to become a Muslim that spelled his death sentence in the eyes of these radical Muslims.
Police have filed a court case against the three brothers, but have taken no action. The three young men are roaming freely in the village and telling everyone that they have "taught a good lesson to the Choohras (derogatory term for Christians)."
It is likely that Shazia was operating at the command of her brothers to catch Litto in a compromising situation. It is common in Pakistan for Muslims to use their sisters or daughters to entice Christians to convert to Islam.
(International Christian Concern)
Jemima Khan's broken country
In Pakistan, refugee children live with the trauma of having witnessed beheadings, yet she still finds much to beguile herJemima Khan
The day I’m leaving for Pakistan a round-robin e-mail pings into my inbox from an address I don’t recognise, Wise Pakistan. The message reads: “It is important you watch this to see what’s coming.”
Ten men are lined up and each one is filmed talking inaudibly to camera. The first man is pinned to the ground by four others. His throat is slit like a goat at Eid and his head held aloft by his hair. The Urdu subtitle reads: “This is what happens to spies.” It's a Taliban home video — to jaunty music — of serial beheadings. There are plenty of these doing the rounds nowadays.
I’m off to Pakistan for the children’s half-term. They visit their father there every holiday. I lived in Pakistan throughout my twenties. Now it’s a different place — the most dangerous country on Earth, some say — and my friends and family are worried.
For my last four years in Pakistan we lived at the quaintly named House 10, Street 1, E7. Two months ago a bomb exploded 100 yards from the house, killing four people; about 1,500 have been killed this year in terrorist attacks.
It’s hardly a tourist destination these days so I’m surprised to find that the flights are all full. I am an aerophobe; my real fear is getting there. The only direct flight is on PIA, otherwise known as Please Inform Allah. British Airways stopped flying there after the Marriott bomb attack in Islamabad last September.
As I’m packing, my London neighbour, the comedian Patrick Kielty, drops off a parcel containing The Complete Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook with a note pointing out the pages on how to escape when tied up, how to take a bullet and how to survive if you wake up next to someone whose name you don’t remember.
I arrive in Islamabad at 3am on a Sunday. With everything that’s going on in Pakistan these days — violent civil war in the northwest, 2.5m internally displaced people, a separatist uprising in Baluchistan, a hostile neighbour, corruption, recession, inflation, unemployment — I’m surprised anyone has the energy for swine flu paranoia, particularly as Pakistan is strictly a pork-free zone.
Yet before disembarking we are obliged to fill out two forms. Recent proximity to pigs and/or Mexicans will result in an obligatory spell in quarantine. It must be the name of the virus that’s causing alarm. Pakistanis dislike pigs. Until quite recently my children thought the word for pig was “gunda-pig” (dirty pig). The wild boar in Lahore zoo is squished into a cage so minute it can’t scratch its own back and people throw stones at it.
I’m staying with Imran, my ex-husband, and our children in the house I helped to design but which we never lived in together. It's on top of a hill outside Islamabad. The courtyard fountain is a reminder of the insanity of political life in Pakistan, even on the periphery. It’s covered in the exquisite blue and white Multani tiles that almost landed me in jail in 1999. I bought them as a present for my mother but, before they reached the port to be shipped to England, they were impounded and I was charged with smuggling antiques (they weren’t, according to Bonhams and other experts here), a non-bailable offence.
I was pregnant and scarpered to England until there was a military coup six months later by the then friendly dictator, General Musharraf. The case was dropped, the tiles were released and I returned to Pakistan with an extra child in tow.
Had I been an aspiring politician, I’d have stayed put in Pakistan. A spell in jail is a prerequisite for anyone wanting to be taken seriously in politics. My ex-husband, who heads a political party, was jailed two years ago for treason and his popularity soared, according to Gallup polls. I should have considered this when campaigning vigorously for his release.
Islamabad was once considered an ideal family posting for foreign diplomats, green and clean and offering an easy life, if a little dull. Now, to get to my friend Asma’s house in an affluent area of the city, I have to go through four security checkpoints manned by armed police. We drink chai, feast on samosas and gupchup (gossip); but we mostly discuss the political situation and how dire it all is.
The next day I set off for the refugee camps close to the Swat valley, where the army is fighting the Taliban. Before I leave, Imran’s chowkidar (watchman) tells me that the newspapers in Pakistan are all funded by Yehudis (Jews). His Kalashnikov-toting commando — it’s the first time Imran has felt the need to have security — nods, adding that there are no Taliban. They are a fabrication by Jews and Hindus to destabilise Pakistan. He adjusts his belt of bullets.
Pakistan pulsates with conspiracy theories. One, which has made it into the local newspapers, is that the Taliban when caught and stripped were revealed to have been “intact, not Muslims”, a euphemism for uncircumcised. (Pakistanis are big on euphemisms.) Their beards were stuck on with glue. “Foreign elements” (India) are suspected.
Jalala camp between Mardan and Mingora is the first point of refuge for those escaping the military operation in Swat. It’s full to capacity: 80% of internally displaced persons are children. Thousands have been separated from their parents when fleeing their homes.
Two children are fighting over coloured crayons when I arrive. A girl with blistered burns on her face from the sun shouts at a small boy who turns out to be her brother: “If you don’t give them back to me I’ll tell the Taliban and they’ll cut your throat.”
According to the teacher in the camp, every child has witnessed public beheadings. Eight-year-old Amina explains quietly from behind her teacher how she saw her uncle’s stomach gouged out by the Taliban. Another girl’s mother was shot for not being in purdah. And another was shot at with her family when she was walking outside during the curfew. Seven-year-old Bisma, I’m told, has seen all the male members of her family hanged in what has become known as Bloody Square. She doesn’t speak.
The children are equally afraid of the army. There’s a joke going round: “What’s worse than being ruled by the Taliban? Being saved by the Pakistani army.” When the chief minister landed in a helicopter next to the camp a few days ago, I’m told, the children fled screaming in terror to their tents.
A group of small children are drawing pictures, part of an art therapy programme run by Unicef in its child-friendly spaces within the camps. Here traumatised children can play volleyball, sing songs and be read stories in shaded safety.
A boy called Salman hands me a precisely drawn and signed picture of a Kalashnikov. A shy eight-year-old girl sitting cross-legged next to him, with her grubby green dupatta half obscuring her smile, offers me hers of a helicopter shelling a village. “That’s my house,” she says, pointing to some scribbled rubble.
Their schools and homes have been destroyed. All have had relatives killed. An orphanage in Mingora was caught in the crossfire when soldiers based themselves on the roof of the building with 200 children trapped inside.
After an hour and a half in the camp we are asked to leave for security reasons. Apparently the Taliban have been infiltrating, trying to recruit supporters.
There’s certainly support for the Taliban in the camps. They represent, for many, an opposing force to an army that “drones” (it's now a verb here) its own people. America’s war on terror, supported by the Pakistani army, is unanimously viewed here as a war on Islam. Newborn twins have been named Sufi Mohammad and Fazlullah after the two militant leaders in Swat.
The following day I drive to Lahore. We take the M2 motorway. (There is no M1.) It’s expensive to take this route and lorries are banned. As a result it must be the most underused motorway in the world.
The following day I drive to Lahore. We take the M2 motorway. (There is no M1.) It’s expensive to take this route and lorries are banned. As a result it must be the most underused motorway in the world.
As I approach Lahore I get a text from Imran: “Don’t panic. There’s been a big bomb blast just now.” The Pakistani Taliban claim responsibility for the deaths of 30 people. The next call is from my mother who has converted worry into crossness.
Compared with the tranquillity and solitude of Imran’s mountain-top idyll, Lahore is mayhem. The sky is a tangled mess of electrical wires, the buildings are half built or half falling down. There is no respite from the 42C heat or the incessant traffic noise, which worsens at night. My mobile phone stops working and I complain that it has melted, but everyone laughs at me. Lahoris are the most telephonically dependent people I’ve met.
It’s the first time I’ve been to Lahore since I left Pakistan six years ago; and it’s where I shared a house for the first five years of my marriage with Imran’s father, his two sisters, their husbands and their children, 16 of us in total.
It’s the first time I’ve been to Lahore since I left Pakistan six years ago; and it’s where I shared a house for the first five years of my marriage with Imran’s father, his two sisters, their husbands and their children, 16 of us in total.
Imran’s father died last year and I’m here to offer condolences, a cultural imperative. It involves visiting the bereaved, in this case my former sisters-in-law, and offering a formal prayer in Arabic, arms extended, palms open, for the deceased.
I’m nervous as I haven’t had any contact with them — bar my Facebook friendship with the children — since getting divorced, but everyone is exceptionally warm and welcoming. I cry when I hug Imran’s niece, who was 13 when I first arrived in Lahore but is now married with a baby.
I’m staying at the haveli (mansion) of Imran’s old schoolfriend, Yousaf Salahuddin, in Lahore’s old city. He is known mostly by reputation, although that’s not necessarily an exclusive club in this conservative city.
You need only to read Salman Rushdie’s Shame to understand how important honour (izzat) and reputation are — although I shouldn’t really write that. The last time I admitted to having read Rushdie (for my university dissertation on post-colonial literature), I had a thousand placard-waving beards outside my door and adverts in the papers, calling me an apostate and demanding that my citizenship be revoked.
Yousaf is Lahore’s best host, tirelessly generous and entertaining. His house is a dusty jewel hidden in a tiny alleyway in what was once Lahore’s red-light district, known as the Heera Mandi. It is now inhabited mostly by cobblers and paan sellers. The haveli is one of the few existing traditional houses built in red brick around a central courtyard. Cherie Blair, Mick Jagger and Elizabeth Hurley have all been guests here.
Once a politician in Benazir Bhutto’s government, Yousaf is now a music producer and fashion aficionado. He has girlfriends — plenty and young — he smokes, he serves alcohol in his home, he loves music and models and he parties with Lollywood’s glitterati. He also has a deep knowledge of Sufism and is a passionate supporter of restoration work in the old city.
Like everyone here he likes to opine: where Pakistan has gone wrong, where politicians have gone wrong, where the interpreters of Islam have gone wrong, where Imran has gone wrong and, by the end of our stay, where I’ve gone wrong. He also loves to eat, usually after midnight.
JP, a film-maker friend, is here to research a film about Pakistan. We head for tea with Iqbal Hussein, who paints dancing girls from the red-light district for a living. His mother was a prostitute.
As we arrive he is packing up his paints. His models, two gypsy sisters, one clutching a baby, are sitting quietly motionless on a mattress in a dark, windowless back room in his studio. Every half an hour in Pakistan there’s “load shedding”, when the electricity cuts out
We sit in candlelight in the thick, still heat and the girls sing classical songs, using upturned metal cups as instruments. Chewing betel nut, they giggle and reveal red-stained teeth. We cheer and clap and chuck rupees in appreciation.
I’m starting to feel sick and dizzy from the heat. Everyone’s face is coated in sweat, strands of hair stick to the girls’ faces as they sing, but nobody else seems bothered. Finally they take pity on me and we retreat prematurely to the dark, fabric-swathed, air-conditioned inner sanctum of Yousaf’s haveli and stay there until nightfall when the old city begins to wake up.
Yousaf has invited a qawwali singer, Ustad Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, a huge star, to perform privately for us in his smoky underground music chamber.
Rahat’s family have been qawwali singers for 600 years, the skill passed down from generation to generation. He shows me a video on his mobile phone of his five-year-old son performing qawwali. He has been training the child since he was two. The little boy sits cross-legged on a chintzy sofa, raises his tiny palms to heaven imploringly, closes his eyes and starts to sing, smashing his hands back down on make-believe tublas and throwing his head back in mock ecstasy with all the passion and panache of his ancestors.
We’re joined by Iman Ali — or “monster” as Yousaf calls her — one of Pakistan’s most famous models/actresses. She’s dressed in tight jeans, a sleeveless top and kitten heels. I’m in what I’d always thought was the obligatory billowing white cotton.
She’s extremely opinionated even for this ready-steady-rant society, prefacing each pronouncement with, “Well what would I know? I’m just a dumb model but . . .” She’s very bold and at times perspicacious, especially about religion.
She tells us that Indians are all “cry babies” and Muslims would do better to be cry babies, too, and that way gain equal levels of sympathy abroad. I like her forthrightness. She says things others wouldn’t dare to say here, albeit euphemistically.
She questions how it is that she is the most successful celebrity in Pakistan and yet the poorest. Then she answers herself: “They must have other sources of income.” JP looks perplexed. “Illegit,” she enlightens. Pakistani actresses and models have traditionally emerged from the red-light area. They must have “friends”, she adds for good measure. Dosti (friendship) is a euphemism for client, while shadi (marriage) means sex with a client.
I return to the calm of the capital, scoop up my cricket-fatigued boys at 2.30am and head to Islamabad airport — now renamed Benazir Bhutto International by her widower, the president. We join the end of a 20-coil queue that snakes from the car park towards the distant terminal.
The airport was the first glimpse I had of Pakistan all those years ago. It’s the country I feel I grew up in and was a part of, arriving at 20 and emerging a decade later a more questioning and conflicted person. I am still maddened by its faults but I bristle and become defensive if others criticise.
As we’re jostled along towards the check-in area, I think about Pakistani society. It is an endless contradiction — hostile and hospitable, euphemistic and unambiguous, spiritual and prescriptive, aggressor and victim. Nothing sums up its topsy-turvy nature quite like the Heera Mandi in Lahore, one of the most conservative cities, where the prostitutes wear burqas and girls with honour dress like Wags.
(Times Online)
Jemima's this article has been given coverage in most of Pakistani newspapers published on June 9. However, they all have been selective.
Pakistan: Christian leaders denounce Islamic tax
The 'jizya' - an Islamic tax on non-Muslims - is a threat that violates human rights, say Christian leaders in Pakistan. The Religious Minorities minister of Pakistan strongly condemned the Taliban-imposed tax.
by Qaiser Felix
The National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) has condemned the imposition of the Jizya, the poll tax for non-Muslims, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on the border with Afghanistan because of its discriminatory nature and because it constitutes a direct threat to basic human rights. Mgr John Saldanha, archbishop of Lahore, and Peter Jacob, NCJP executive secretary, have urged the federal and provincial governments in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) to do something to alleviate the plight of non-Muslim families forced to “hand over their hard earned bread and butter to the extremists.”
Lashkar-e-Islam, a militant Islamist organisation based in Bara, about 10 kilometres south-west of Peshawar, is responsible for applying the tax.
Local sources said that more than 700 non-Muslim families have had to pay the tax.
NCJP leaders have complained about the lack of security among religious minorities in Orkazai and Khyber agency areas and that they are victims of harassment, religious taxation and expulsion.
The tax also is a threat to the country’s “democratic credentials and political system”. For this reason the government “should make it clear that Pakistan is a democratic country that cannot allow religious minorities to be subjected to such discrimination and economic injustice because they are equal citizens and not a conquered people.” These principles, the NCJP statement said, “are still part of the Constitution and the political system.”
Religious Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti reacted to the appeals of Catholic leaders by strongly condemning the demand on non-Muslims to pay the jizya.
Speaking to AsiaNews, the minister, who is Catholic, said that the tax “is illegal, unethical and against the Constitution of Pakistan.”
Moreover, in condemning those who perpetrate violence in the name of religion, he insisted that the protection of non-Muslims “is our constitutional obligation and moral duty”. The government, he reiterated, “will not let the Taliban threat and harm the minorities.”
(Enerpub)
by Qaiser Felix
The National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) has condemned the imposition of the Jizya, the poll tax for non-Muslims, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on the border with Afghanistan because of its discriminatory nature and because it constitutes a direct threat to basic human rights. Mgr John Saldanha, archbishop of Lahore, and Peter Jacob, NCJP executive secretary, have urged the federal and provincial governments in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) to do something to alleviate the plight of non-Muslim families forced to “hand over their hard earned bread and butter to the extremists.”
Lashkar-e-Islam, a militant Islamist organisation based in Bara, about 10 kilometres south-west of Peshawar, is responsible for applying the tax.
Local sources said that more than 700 non-Muslim families have had to pay the tax.
NCJP leaders have complained about the lack of security among religious minorities in Orkazai and Khyber agency areas and that they are victims of harassment, religious taxation and expulsion.
The tax also is a threat to the country’s “democratic credentials and political system”. For this reason the government “should make it clear that Pakistan is a democratic country that cannot allow religious minorities to be subjected to such discrimination and economic injustice because they are equal citizens and not a conquered people.” These principles, the NCJP statement said, “are still part of the Constitution and the political system.”
Religious Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti reacted to the appeals of Catholic leaders by strongly condemning the demand on non-Muslims to pay the jizya.
Speaking to AsiaNews, the minister, who is Catholic, said that the tax “is illegal, unethical and against the Constitution of Pakistan.”
Moreover, in condemning those who perpetrate violence in the name of religion, he insisted that the protection of non-Muslims “is our constitutional obligation and moral duty”. The government, he reiterated, “will not let the Taliban threat and harm the minorities.”
(Enerpub)
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