Sisters Express Thanks for Rescue

The three sisters said they had been in hiding for four years in Pakistan, going underground because they would not renounce their Christian faith and embrace Islam.

So when they arrived Tuesday in Los Angeles, after being spirited out of Pakistan with help from the Christian Rescue Committee, they gave thanks.

Actor Dean Jones, who heads the committee, met Cathrain Shaheen and her sisters, Josephin and Saraphin, at Los Angeles International Airport. He said their arrival created “a time of rejoicing. But we do need to mention that a great carnage is going on around the world against Christian people.”

Militant Muslims, said Cathrain Shaheen, “tried to force me again and again to embrace Islam, but I refused. I said, ‘Jesus is my savior, and he gave his life for me.’ ”

The Shaheens are just one example of persecution suffered by people around the world because of their religious beliefs, Jones said.

The State Department’s Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad reported last year that “followers of all the world’s major religions--Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Bahais and others--are currently discriminated against, harassed, detained, tortured and killed.”

The advisory committee was especially critical of three countries: Iran for its persecution of Bahais, which included jailing 14 of them in 1997 and sentencing four to death; Saudi Arabia, where all religions but Islam are outlawed; and Pakistan, which enforces a blasphemy law carrying a possible death penalty against Christians and Ahmaddiya Muslims.

“There are over 200 million Christians [worldwide] under severe persecution--secret police, torture, imprisonment and death,” Jones said Tuesday. “There is anti-Semitism breaking out in the former Soviet Union. There are great needs regarding persecuted people around the world.”

Cathrain Shaheen told reporters at an airport news conference Tuesday that she had been headmistress at a school where all the other teachers and students were Muslims.

They resented her because they did not want a Christian heading the school, she said. When she refused to transfer, she said, “they accused me of saying something against their prophet Muhammad. I did not say anything against the prophet.”

She was imprisoned but released by a moderate Islamic judge, who was later assassinated after he released a second Christian, Jones said.

Shaheen said she and her family received death threats and went into hiding until the Christian Rescue Committee helped them escape.

After their brief stop in Los Angeles, they left for an undisclosed city on the East Coast and are expected to testify later before a congressional committee investigating religious persecution, Jones said.

The actor said his group, formed just over a year ago, has rescued 15 Christians from Saudi Arabia, 17 Jews from western Ukraine and the three Pakistani women. The committee also is trying to rescue 13 young men from an African country he declined to name, he said.

“We would have loved to have gotten the moderate Muslim judge [who released Cathrain Shaheen] out of Pakistan,” he said.

The committee was inspired by Varian Fry’s Emergency Rescue Committee, which saved 4,000 Jews from the Nazis in 1940, Jones said.

Upon meeting the actor, Cathrain Shaheen said: “My heart is very happy to see you. I saw the love of Jesus Christ, which you have in your heart for the people who are persecuted from the other nations. Thank you for all this.”