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Saturday, January 18, 2003

By Ann Rodgers-Melnick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Christians in Pakistan, second-class citizens long before 9/11, have suffered a series of massacres and will suffer more if the United States attacks Iraq, said the Rev. Maqsood Kamil, executive secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan.

He is visiting Mt. Lebanon United Presbyterian Church, where he will preach at 8:30 and 11 a.m. tomorrow. Kamil teaches at an interdenominational seminary in a town where Islamist extremists have been active.

He asked for prayers.

"Since 9/11 we have been worshipping with security guards, police guards. It doesn't look nice," he said.

"Somehow God has protected us up to now. We know we are targets."

There are signs of hope, as the government has instituted reforms, he said.

Christians account for 3 percent of Pakistan's population by government estimates and 8 percent by church estimates. Kamil, 38, is old enough to remember better relationships between Muslims and Christians. Before 1947, when Pakistan was partitioned as a Muslim homeland, his native Punjab state was heavily Sikh and was also home to Zoroastrians, Hindus and Christians. His grandfather was a Sikh exorcist, but his father converted to Christianity.

Low-level discrimination by Muslims against Christians became far worse in the 1970s, when Pakistan became an ideologically Islamic state, he said.

Christians had run many of the best high schools and colleges. There, Muslims from elite families had built respectful relationships with Christians, he said. But the government nationalized the schools in 1972.

"So for about 30 years, the relationships between Christians and Muslims have diminished," he said.

A few years later, Pakistan adopted Islamic law. Christians could no longer testify in court. Some unscrupulous Muslims exploited the law to accuse Christian neighbors of blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad, a capital offense, so they could seize their property.

The government adopted "political separation," under which Christians could not vote for Muslim candidates to the 270-member national legislature, but only for one of four seats reserved for Christians.

"Muslim politicians didn't need Christians and wouldn't help them," Kamil said.

But 9/11 raised persecution to levels he had never imagined. Job discrimination and sporadic personal vendettas turned into mass murder at churches and Christian schools and hospitals.

Yet there are hopeful changes.

The government has returned most Christian high schools. And President Pervez Musharraf "has been good to Christians," he said.

Musharraf dismantled the religiously segregated electorate.

"In October, Christians voted for Muslims. That has brought a very positive change," Kamil said. "Muslim candidates came to our seminary and asked for our help."

For the first time, he saw "Merry Christmas" banners in the town bazaar. Perhaps the best sign was that after the Christmas attack on a Presbyterian chapel, "lots and lots of Muslims openly condemned it," he said.

But the situation remains volatile. The same elections that returned Christians to the political mainstream saw the first election of Muslim extremist candidates ever, he said. They now dominate the border region with Afghanistan.

Most Pakistani Muslims believe any act by the United States is an act by Christians on behalf of Christians against Islam, he said.

If the United States attacks Iraq, "Pakistani churches will be burned. Pakistani Christians will be attacked," he said.

In addition to prayers, he said, he hopes American Christians contribute to an emergency relief fund for Pakistani Christians. He would like U.S. churches to offer asylum to certain Christians who must escape Pakistan to stay alive.

If Pakistan is to have the better future he hopes for, he said, "the Christian community will have to be economically strong and self-sufficient."