Pakistan: Christians targeted by the Taliban

At the funeral for a victim of the Lahore suicide bombing

“The heart of Lahore and its children were attacked this week,” said Luavut Zahid in Dawn. On Easter Sunday, a suicide bomber detonated a vest loaded with explosives and ball bearings at a playground in Gulshan-i-Iqbal park, which was crowded with Christian families celebrating the holiday and mingling with their Muslim neighbors. Children and parents were ripped apart as they lined up for a merry-go-round and picnicked on the grass. A Taliban splinter group claimed responsibility for the atrocity—the deadliest since the murder of nearly 150 people at a Peshawar army school in 2014—saying it had targeted Pakistani Christians. But most of the 70 people who died in the attack were Muslims, and at least 29 were children. Authorities responded by cracking down on suspected jihadists, arresting more than 200 people across Punjab province. The city of Lahore itself “chose compassion.” Thousands of people streamed to hospitals to donate blood and bring food and flowers to the wounded. Muslims and Christians mourned together.

This tragedy is the result of “our criminal neglect of our duty” as Muslims to protect Pakistani Christians, said Mosharraf Zaidi in The News International. Our 3 million Christians are an intrinsic part of our country. Wealthy Muslims send their kids to Christian private schools; Muslim doctors turn to Christian nurses for assistance. Yet this is the third terrorist attack in three years specifically targeting Christians. Last year, also in Lahore, two churches were bombed, killing 15 people. In 2013, suicide bombers attacked a church in Peshawar, killing 127. Why weren’t Punjabi authorities patrolling the Easter celebration?

“It is not surprising that Punjab was targeted,” said The Nation in an editorial. Extremism has been growing across the region. Just last week, Islamic groups banded together to oppose Punjab’s new law creating women’s shelters and a hotline for battered women; they called the measure “un-Islamic.” The same day as the Lahore bombing, Islamabad was besieged by 10,000 supporters of Mumtaz Qadri, the assassin who in 2011 shot dead Punjab’s moderate governor, Salman Taseer. The governor’s sin was to speak out against the execution of a Punjabi Christian woman for blasphemy. Qadri was executed last month, and his supporters now want him declared a martyr and all clerics serving sentences for terrorism released. Such demands are beyond ridiculous. “The nation does not have the patience anymore amid death and fear to sympathize with those who defend murderers.”

We need to stop our youth being brainwashed in extremist madrasas, said The Daily Times. Millions of children “are exposed to unfiltered hateful demagoguery that warps their attitudes toward non-Muslims in a harmful way.” That they should be incited against Christians is horrifying, as Christians have “a special status” in Islam as People of the Book. These Islamic schools must be dismantled and reformed, or else Pakistan will continue to witness the “glorification of religiously motivated violence.”