Pakistan’s Christians Fear Militant Reprisals

At Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Church here, the priest prays in Urdu, parishioners sit cross-legged on the floor, and some of the faithful wander past the altar in the middle of Mass to set flowers at the foot of a statue of Mary.

Isolated in a corner of the Islamic world where many visitors are surprised to find any non-Muslims, Pakistan’s tiny Christian community has managed to survive in the shadow of neighboring Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. This is despite a rise in Islamic militancy and recent attacks from extremists who consider Christianity heresy and black magic.

But this perilous existence shows signs of worsening. In recent days, Pakistan’s Christians have been asking for protection from the government because of the expected war between the United States and the Taliban.

Holy Rosary parishioners believe that enraged Islamic militants and Afghan refugees in Pakistan will take out their fury at the United States on the nearest convenient target--their Christian neighbors. Says Father Maxie, the parish priest: “Our people are living in fear.”

Worshipers were in a nervous frame of mind Sunday, counseling one another to keep low profiles and avoid any public discussion of politics or religion. Already, some Christian families reported, they have been told that they will be slaughtered if U.S. bombs start falling.

Shafeek Masih, a 25-year-old laborer in the outlying village of Nawan Kili, heeded the warnings and moved his mother and sister to what he considers a safer place near the church, an area with a high concentration of Christians.

Tensions in his neighborhood of Nawan Kili, where there are about 500 Catholic families, increased immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he recounted in an interview conducted in a cramped apartment across from the church. About 15 men piled into one room to hear the discussion.

“We started to have problems already on Sept. 11,” he said. “When my mother and sister came out of our house, there were young students there who were throwing rocks at them and using words of abuse. . . . They said, ‘If America attacks Afghanistan, we will kill you.’ ”

Shafeek--the last name, Masih, means simply “Christian” and is used by almost all the members of Pakistan’s Christian community--said the house is surrounded by a militant Muslim area, so it would be difficult for the family to escape an angry mob. That is why he moved part of his family.

“We are Pakistani,” he explained. “But they think that we are Christian, and Americans are also Christian, so that is why they will do it. I think it is safer here.”

Another member of the community, Saleen Masih, 34, agreed.

“At the moment, things are under control, but if America is going to attack, the situation will quickly change,” he said.

Patrick Saint Masih, chairman of Quetta’s Asian United Christian Assn., said he is desperate that the wider world know of his community’s vulnerability before America launches any attack.

“Many Christians are residing among the Muslims, and especially in Quetta these Pushtuns from Afghanistan are residing with us,” he said, referring to the ethnic group that is the main base for the Taliban movement.

He said the Christians should get financial aid from America so they can build a “Christian colony”--a self-imposed ghetto where, the retired government servant imagines, they could live securely behind a cordon of police or soldiers.

“Our main problem is that we are all very poor,” he lamented.

There are only about 25,000 Christians in this city of 1.2 million. In all of Pakistan--a country of 140 million--less than 2 million people are Christian. They are mostly Catholic, Episcopalian and Pentecostal.

In 1998, when the United States launched cruise missiles into Afghanistan after the terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Christians were targeted in riots that swept through much of Pakistan.

A series of religiously inspired assaults in recent years has included a 1998 bombing in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Karachi and the massacre in 1999 of a family of nine, hacked to death in Nowshera, 20 miles east of the northern city of Peshawar. According to published accounts, an anti-Christian slogan was scrawled in blood on the walls of the house where the family was killed.

Saint Masih said he would expect even worse attacks this time.

“The Taliban use the words of Islam,” he said. “That is why we are afraid they will try to turn this into a war over religion.”

Although Christianity claims roots in the Asian subcontinent dating to the time of St. Thomas, the doubting apostle, today’s Pakistani Christians trace their history more directly to missionaries who arrived when the British conquered India. Many of the Christians of Quetta are descendants of Punjabi soldiers who fought for the British.

As a result, the Holy Rosary parish is located in a part of Quetta known as the “cantonment,” a neighborhood reserved for the military since the days of the British Empire. It sits on Ordnance Road, a street controlled by an army checkpoint at one end where a soldier in a sandbagged foxhole points a rifle at passing cars.

That military presence affords Christians a measure of security around the church, but those living in outlying neighborhoods feel much more afraid, the parishioners said.

At their Sunday service, men in drab tunics and baggy pants sat on the floor on one side of the aisle. Women, their long black hair covered by brightly shimmering scarves, sat on the other. Shoes are taken off at the doors, and the worshipers singing their lilting hymns in Urdu to the accompaniment of a traditional Pakistani drum were mostly barefoot.

Saint Masih said he hoped that the United States will be careful.

“I think war should be made against terrorism by thinking, not by attacking,” he said. “So innocent human beings could be saved.”