This past Easter weekend, two events in Pakistan served as reminders of the precarious position of Christians living in societies with Muslims majorities. The first was, of course, the bombing of a park in Lahore, the ancient capital of Pakistan’s largest province, Punjab. On the afternoon of Easter Sunday, while members of Pakistan’s increasingly beleaguered Christian minority celebrated the holiday, a suicide bomber detonated his device, killing at least 70 people and wounding at least 300 more. Shortly after the attack, a faction of the Pakistani Taliban named Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, which in truly Orwellian fashion means “Assembly of the Free,” claimed responsibility, admitting brazenly that the attack was “aimed at killing members of Pakistan's Christian minority gathered at the park to celebrate Easter Sunday.” Since Christians are less than two percent of Pakistan’s estimated 190 million people, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the attack killed Muslims as well as Christians. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was outraged and after visiting victims in hospital, declared that, “Our resolve as a nation and as a government is getting stronger and the cowardly enemy is trying for soft targets.” While I don’t doubt the Prime Minister’s sincerity, he really has his work cut out for him. As the Canadian Broadcasting Company put it, the jihadist market in Pakistan is “saturated.” And as recent events in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, demonstrate, there’s no shortage of Pakistani’s eager to victimize its Christian minority.
read more: http://www.christianheadlines.com/columnists/breakpoint/faith-can-be-fatal-pakistani-christians-in-the-crosshairs.html _________________ SI Moderator - Greg Gordon
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