Note #9159 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:
06121 Feb. 22, 2006
Pakistan Christians lament church attacks
by Anto Akkara Ecumenical News International
NEW DELHI - Christians in Pakistan are asking their government for protection from attacks by Muslims protesting the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in Western media.
"The properties and places of worship of the religious minorities are increasingly becoming a target for extremist attackers," the National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) of the Roman Catholic Church in Pakistan said in a statement issued on Feb. 20.
That came in response to the desecration and torching of two churches - St. Mary's Catholic Church and St. Saviour's church of the Church of Pakistan - the previous day by mobs in Sukkar in Sindh province.
"We strongly condemn this terrible breakdown of the law-and-order machinery and the government's inability to stop abuse of religion and the law in Pakistan," said Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha, the president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Pakistan.
The Catholic group noted that a half-dozen churches, a number of Christian schools, a college and a hospital had come under attack by protesters incensed by the publication of the cartoons, which appeared first last September in Denmark.
"The government has to send out a clear message to the mobs that they cannot get away after attacking minorities like this," Peter Jacob, the NCJP's executive secretary, told Ecumenical News International from his office in Lahore. He said the government had "tried to ignore acts that showed dangerous trends" and "failed in addressing the root causes of religious intolerance."
"It is a brutal act of religious terrorism," the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance said, condemning the assaults on churches. "The sense of insecurity and fear has worsened among minorities after the church attacks," said Shabhaz Bhatti, the alliance chairperson.
Church of Pakistan Bishop Samuel Pervez, president of the National Council of Churches of Pakistan, told ENI, "We are really feeling helpless." He said he regretted that Muslims felt indignation over the cartoons. "But the sad result is that we have to suffer for that," he added. The council is a grouping of four major Protestant churches in a nation where more than 95 per cent of 162 million citizens are Muslims.
Meanwhile, reaction to the cartoon protests created its own controversy in neighboring India, where 13 per cent of 1.1 billion citizens are Muslims. Haji Yaqoob Qureishi, the welfare minister in Uttar Pradesh state, the most populous with 180 million people, offered a reward of about $11.8 million for the head of the Danish cartoonist who caricatured Muhammad (actually there were several). Despite a call by some Muslim leaders for the minister's resignation, five days after his declaration Qureishi was still in his ministerial post.
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