Respecting Islamic Tradition, Culture

"It has been exploited by individuals to settle personal scores, to grab land, to violate the rights of non-Muslims, to basically harass them."  Zora Yusuf, Head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan

In Pakistan, Muslims are resentful and angry about the 'noise' that emanates from Christian churches during worship when parishioners sing hymns.  It is an annoyance reflecting the interference in daily life of an alien religion.  Furthermore, a religion whose faithful fail to understand that they must act in deference to the majority religion which is a true reflection of God's wishes.

"Their priest should tell them that they should respect the call for prayer.  They should respect the mosque and the Qur'an", according to Hajji Pervez, among Muslims gathered at their local mosque, about 100 metres from a house where an 11-year-old Pakistani Christian girl with Down Syndrome lives with her family.  Her name is Rifta Masih.  She is accused of having blasphemed against Islam.


Perhaps the Christians living in squalid poverty, renting accommodation from Muslim landlords, find the five-times-daily call to prayer of the muezzin from the minarets atop the mosques an intrusion in their daily lives, but they must not express such an untoward opinion.  They must understand that the music that can be heard from the interior of the modest church is offensive, not the loudspeaker-enhanced voice of the muezzin.

The people of Pakistan take their religion seriously, as a devout community of believers.  There are blasphemy laws in Pakistan that are sternly commanding; life imprisonment and even death can legally result from proven cases of blasphemy.  In 2009 a Christian woman employed as a farmhand was tasked to fetch water for her coworkers, but some among them refused to drink water contaminated by an "unclean" Christian.

Asia Noreen, the Christian woman, took exception to this and a complaint was later lodged with a local cleric that she had made derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammad.  Causing a mob to descend on her house to attack her and her family until they were rescued by police.  Asia Noreen remains languishing in jail to this day, capital punishment not yet complete, for she was sentenced to death.

The Punjab Governor was shot by his own bodyguard in 2011 when he expressed sympathy for her plight.  The bodyguard was feted by those who supported his murderous act, and they are legion.  Two months later Pakistan's first Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs, a Christian Cabinet member, was shot to death as he was leaving his mother's house.

Christians in Pakistan are relegated to rude tasks below the station of Muslims, in a caste system imposed upon non-Muslims.  Christians are employed as cleaners and sweepers, and Muslims consider them to be "unclean".  Although Pakistani Muslims revere the Qur'an, which is traditionally written in Arabic, few can read Arabic, although they recite passages they have learned, without knowing their meaning.

When the young Christian girl was seen leaving her home holding a bag with various items, she was accused of having defiled the Qur'an.  A mob soon surrounded her, and she too was rescued by police, placed in detention for two weeks to keep her from being killed much as had occurred to a Christian man similarly accused of burning pages of a Koran, when a mob spirited him out of prison, stabbed him and burned him.

The police, looking through the objects the girl carried in a shopping bag found no Qur'an, but there were religious and Arabic-language papers that had been partially consumed by fire.  The girl's family had to be spirited away lest they be murdered by the ravening mobs looking to avenge the honour of Islam, and other Christians in the suburb of the capital, Islamabad were forced to flee as well.

The Muslim community is now pressuring Muslim landlords to evict all the Christian tenants from the area.  Despite which, Muslim residents insist they have always treated their Christian neighbours with respect.  They also say that Christians need to respect Islamic traditions and culture.