On Sunday, March 15, 2015, two churches were targeted by Taliban suicide bombers in the Youhanabad neighborhood of Lahore, Pakistan. The jihadists attacked St. John’s Catholic Church and Christ Church, killing at least 15 and wounding at least 75 people. News reports indicate that this was the most deadly attack on Pakistan’s Christians since the double suicide-bombing of All Saint’s Church in Peshawar that killed 83 people in September 2013. Another report indicates that the death toll is now 16, and expected to continue to rise.
One of the dead was a police officer who successfully prevented the jihadists from entering the church, but died when they detonated their bombs, according to Voice of America. In the case of both churches, the bombers were stopped at the church gates by police officers and church guards, and so blew themselves up at the entrances to the churches. It is thanks to the police and church guards “that the death toll is not much greater,” says The Barnabas Fund.
Unlike past attacks on Pakistan’s Christians, though, this attack contained a twist. Says The Tribune, “Up to 4,000 Christians later took to the streets of Lahore, many armed with clubs as they smashed vehicles and attacked a city bus station in a rare show of anger.” The Tribune reveals that two suspected “militants” were beaten to death in the violence that took place after the bombing. Christians in other parts of Pakistan also staged protests in the wake of deadly attacks.
Adding insult to injury, this act of defiance and frustration may come back to haunt the Christians. Not only do they have to fear further retaliation from the Taliban, but the Pakistan government — always trying to placate the jihadists — may well come down hard on them, although at this point the government is assuring there will be justice for the Christian community. In addition, the unprecedented push back from the tiny Christian community will serve those who are always looking for moral equivalence between perpetrators and victims.
In a population of 180 million, Pakistan’s Christians only make up two percent. They are a disenfranchised, impoverished, harassed, and persecuted minority, with conditions deteriorating even further in the past few years as the Taliban from Afghanistan has moved into the country next door. But even a tiny, persecuted minority can only take so much! Even Christians can only take so much. As one Pakistani Church leader testified before Congress, Pakistani Christians have turned the other cheek and turned the other cheek, and they have no cheeks left to turn. And who else is championing the cause of Pakistan’s Christians? Their greatest champion was murdered for trying to bring religious freedom to the country.
Earlier this month was the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Pakistan’s Minister for Minorities, my friend Shahbaz Bhatti. Bhatti, who was the only federal government minister who was a Christian, was brutally ambushed outside his own mother’s house on March 2, 2011, after practically prophesying his own death a few months earlier.
Bhatti knew that he would not be here long. The Christian leader said that he never married because he did not believe it was fair to subject a wife and children to concern for his life. Bhatti recorded a video with the BBC four months before his death, leaving instructions for it to be released if he were killed. In the video he declared, “I believe in Jesus Christ who has given His own life for us. I know what is the meaning of “Cross,” and I am following the Cross, and I am ready to die for a cause.”
A friend and fellow advocate for persecuted religious believers, Benedict Rogers of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, wrote a tribute to Bhatti that appeared in the Catholic Herald on February 27. Rogers talks about how Bhatti took him to meet a seven-year-old girl, Sharee Komal, who had been raped and tortured because she came from a Christian family. ” Shahbaz was helping her and her family, because no one else would,” Rogers said.
Rogers observed that while he was impressed by Bhatti’s “calmness and courage,” there were times when the Pakistani advocate had good reason to be fearful. “But the mark of courage is not an absence of fear, but a matter of how one handles fear,” he writes. “Shahbaz never allowed fear to paralyse or overcome him.”
In my own tribute to Shahbaz Bhatti for Front Page Magazine soon after his death I wrote how condemnations of Bhatti’s murder had come from leaders across the globe, including President Barack Obama, Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, British Prime Minister David Cameron, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.
“Now it remains to be seen who among these world leaders will actually take action for the beleaguered minorities of Pakistan, as well as making strong-sounding statements.” I wrote. “Who will defend the Christians of Pakistan, now that this great, good man is gone?” I demanded.
It is time to ask that question again, just as we are asking it about Middle Eastern Christians, and we are asking it about African Christians. All victims of different strains — Taliban, ISIS, Boko Haram, Sudanese regime — of the same evil plague. And all, to one extent or another, victims of indifference from the world at large and from their fellow Christians.
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