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Pakistan’s Communal Violence: Redundance of Orchards and Poetry

Author Azam Gill 1 1347
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Azam discusses violence against Pakistan’s Christian minority, urging Muslim scholars to promote religious tolerance and dialogue through symbolic gestures, exclusively for Different Truths.

Violence and bigotry bide their time even under the peaceable orange and lemon groves of Pakistan’s citrus powerhouse, district Sargodha, Punjab, 241 kilometres south of Islamabad, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s capital. On 24 May 2024 in Sargodha, bigotry was once again able to override the law and flaunt its colours with impunity in the latest orgy of ransacking and alleged murder of Pakistan’s most impoverished community.

Yet, Sargodha is also home to Poets exhorting Peace and love:  Ahmed Nadeem Qasimi, Aftab Ahmed Shah, Syed Wasi Shah, Prof. Haroon Ur Rasheed Tabasum, Muhammad Hayat Bhatti, Syed Qasim Shah, Mehmood Awan, Wazir Agha, Muhammad Hayat Bhati, Kawish Tamimi and Ghulam Muhammad Dardpoe.

Their fine words are to no avail, when mob violence, claiming retributive blood sacrifices, periodically erupts in Christian localities, neutralising Pakistan’s exclusive blasphemy laws. After all, passing a law only to repeatedly have mob violence decide its summary implementation is absurd and futile, showcasing the impotence of Pakistan’s selective legal procedures implemented subject to the degree of a community’s citizenship status.

Discounting the twenty-six churches burned and the Bibles desecrated in the 2023 Jaranwala pogrom, Christians in Sargodha district have suffered three incidents of random mob reprisals in the last twelve-month period.

The structure of such cyclic events is invariable.

A Christian in a low-income neighbourhood is at odds with a neighbour.

The Christian is accused of blasphemy against Islam.

There is no verification, and investigation is pre-empted by a mob.

Nobody pauses to ask the million-rupee question: the plausibility of a Pakistani … ever having the nerve to commit blasphemy against Islam…

Nobody pauses to ask the million-rupee question: the plausibility of a Pakistani Christian — by definition a downtrodden second-class citizen — ever having the nerve to commit blasphemy against Islam, in an Islamic Republic where 95%+ of the population is Muslim, there is 45%+ illiteracy, personal weapons abound, the police and the justice system are known for being biased, ineffective and corrupt and where Christian representation in parliament consists of government nominees.

So, like a raging wildfire escaping the clutches of a fire brigade, a lynch-mob initiates summary and indiscriminate reprisals. Although the police are accused of standing by long enough for damage to occur before intervening, they unabashedly issue press statements claiming a heroic rescue. Some rioters are arrested, for the customary rap on the knuckles, before being released to public applause.

The accused victim(s) are taken into custody “for their safety” and then rot for years as under-trial prisoners. After all, they are only considered a bunch of uppity sanitary workers grouped under the C-word, who lose their place and then get what they deserve.

The English language press emits politically correct belches to placate well-endowed western human rights NGOs, politicians decry a ‘foreign hand,’ the sitting government spins lofty semantics, Muslim clergymen denounce the rioters and quote their Holy Book, and Muslim human rights groups express righteous indignation, raise funds, and help Christian community leaders to resettle the victims. They all congratulate themselves and each other and wait for applause and gratitude: that wasn’t so bad, see?

Life then reverts to its habitual abnormality, while the pot simmers in anticipation of its next eruption to ensure the longevity of this infernal cycle.

The 24 May 2024 Sargodha Incident was no difference. Social media clips show an old man, nearly beaten to death, lying in an ambulance being stone-pelted, while armed police beg the rioters to halt — the state’s surrender to mob rule, or confirmation of second-class citizenship?

After all, being born second and third-raters due to their faith, Christians can never aspire to the highest office in the land. Their parliamentary representation is a travesty of nominated members. Their attempts at redressing grievances are interpreted as ingratitude or even treason.

…Pakistan’s poor and illiterate just seem to be waiting for an excuse to rip into an impoverished Christian neighbourhood …

What needs more urgent attention, however, is why Pakistan’s poor and illiterate just seem to be waiting for an excuse to rip into an impoverished Christian neighbourhood, burn churches, desecrate Bibles, gut bare-brick homes with leaky roofs, loot misshapen pots and pans, smash cheap TV sets and finally, rape, maim and kill by throwing living bodies into an industrial brick kiln while their children are made to watch. 

https://www.dawn.com/news/1456442

Simply put, it’s not a phenomenon of class conflict, but based on religious phobia, neatly tucked away under thick drawing room carpets woven by mainly Christian child labour.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/boy-leader-of-child-labour-protest-is-shot-dead-1616194.html

This phobia ensures that minority Christian communities live in fear and stay in their place.

The rank and file of the majority are led to believe that they are only discharging their religious duty in punishing them. The militant leadership, after having successfully convinced itself that Christians are heretics and blasphemers, evangelize their conclusions which ferment the mindset of their foot soldiers.

Christians are widely perceived to be living in a permanently blasphemous and heretical state. Only an Islamic scholar can say whether or not the following is theologically justified.

The general population is convinced that Christians are heretics from Islam.

That the foretelling of their Prophet (PBUH) in the Holy Bible had been tampered with.

That People of the Book is a singular, referring to only one True Book, received by Jews and then Christians, but altered.

So, if the People of the Book did not have the True Book, they were not who they claimed to be and deserved capital punishment.

That, just as the Islamic World means the transnational Ummah, there is an equivalent Christian Umma, that the crusades are ongoing, that this crusading Christian umma, is determined to deny the Muslim world its destiny and that Pakistani Christians are its vanguard.

This fatal logic disregards the mechanics of modern, secular nation-states which, irrespective of the majority religion, do not formulate national or international policy in the interests of a transnational religious polity, but cynically pursue their national interests to the detriment of Christian minority communities elsewhere.

That Son of God denotes a biological relationship.

That Christians, believing in tritheism, practice Shirk…and have set up three Gods as the Holy Trinity.

That Christians, believing in tritheism, practice Shirk — a mortal sin — and have set up three Gods as the Holy Trinity. The accusers discount the first line of the Nicene Creed common to all Christian denominations: “I believe in one God …”

Yet even were the Christian creed — or that of any other faith community — to endorse polytheism, why should it become another faith community’s business? Surely, every faith community is well within its rights to express and practice its beliefs, irrespective of how different they may be from those of its neighbouring communities.

Even in the pre-Zia-ul-Haq era… teeth grinding at the sound of hymns emanating from church, considered sinful singsong. Men and women in church, at Bible study and church youth groups were viewed as institutionalized dating clubs! Even though, out of fear, Holy Communion was taken with grape juice (still is), rumours were rife about drunkenness in church — not just drinking ‘shara’ab’ in the singular, but ‘sharaba’an’ in the Punjabi plural: many boozes. And there were dark mutterings about Sunday church bells — still are. The sound was not interpreted as a call to Sunday service, but Christian ostentatiousness — down, boy!

Pakistani Church Shut for Ringing Its Bells

When such mindsets are rife among the poor to lower-middle-class and semi-literate to illiterate, they are ready and waiting for an opportunity to enhance their credentials in righteousness by conflagrating a spark into a vigilante inferno.

The architecture of this mindset makes it impervious to wind and weather.

Its foundation grows tentacles, which spread far and wide, reaching the roots of idyllic citrus groves in places like district Sargodha.

…enlightened Muslims do not subscribe to such diabolising of their Christian neighbours…

Although enlightened Muslims do not subscribe to such diabolising of their Christian neighbours, they are impotent against bigotry and fanaticism. Were they willing or able to clean house, raise their voices, and institute reforms, Christian phobia might be contained.

The basis on which Christians are perceived as heretics and blasphemers is rebuttable, but Christians lack the status and credibility to convince these hardliners.

Enlightened Muslims are best suited to confute this propaganda prejudicial to their own value system.

The discourse against Christians can only be refuted and reset from the pulpits of preeminent Muslim ecclesiasts.

Islamic scholars are doubtless aware of the simple content of the Christian Nicene Creed, and the difference between literal meaning, simile and metaphor, as they are of the variability, in time, space and context, of signified signifier and cognate meaning, in understanding and interpreting language.

As scholarly readers of history, they surely know that the closest structure to a ‘Christian World’ used to be the defunct Holy Roman Empire. Even at its peak, it was just a pompous semantic construct, representing the ground reality of a multi-ethnic complex of territories in central Europe started in 800 AC, neutralised by Martin Luther’s 16th century Reformation and the 18th century French Revolution.

Throughout its heyday, this misnomer’s power projection remained subordinate to its internecine power struggles. It could hardly be called the epicenter of a transnational alliance of Christian countries, hotly contested as it was by the Orthodox churches from Greece through Byzantium to Syria-Iraq to Ethiopia to Russia, to India …!

Muslim ecclesiasts need to energetically deploy this cognisance in the interests of peace, harmony and their own good name.

Misperception of Christian beliefs has created mind-sets that see Christians and their faith intimidating the ambitions and well-being of the transnational Muslim polity and challenging their belief system by choosing rationalism and secularism.

There is no reason to doubt that Muslim scholars are aware of the truth and reality of Christian beliefs…

There is no reason to doubt that Muslim scholars are aware of the truth and reality of Christian beliefs enumerated in the preceding paragraphs. Their ability to produce effective counter narratives against the perception of Islamophobia in the west has tempered their debating skills.

Armed with the success of this experience, it is perplexing that these devout and pious leaders abstain from issuing bold and effective counter-narratives against Christianophobia to protect their Christian brothers and sisters and embellish the attractivity of their own belief system.

It is time for them to deploy these honed talents to redress situations in their home countries that keep stretching the boundaries of Christianophobia and bringing world peace to breaking point and bringing those culturally renowned homelands into disrepute.

The bishops of Pakistan, should take the initiative and invite Pakistan’s Muslim ecclesiasts to a sumptuous biryani and halwa party. They should greet their guests barefoot, dressed in Jesus Christ’s “seamless garment,” like the Christian Sadhu Sundar Singh Jee, the ‘apostle with bleeding feet.’  Their pomp and finery under Phrygian headdresses could be sent on a badly needed vacation, or to the dry cleaners.’ After the ritual gluttony, they should then present their guests with a ten-point appeal and request them that they defuse it energetically from their pulpits.

The biryani and halwa fest should be institutionalised as an annual event to ensure the glowing health of assurances and promises.

TEN-POINT APPEAL TO THE MUSLIM CLERGY — Peace be upon you.

Please educate your rampaging rank and file on the following simple facts to save them: from becoming murderers, desecrators and looters.

  • 1.    The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is not a mathematical construct.
  • 2.    The Christian doctrine of the Trinity affirms Monotheism.
  • 3.    Jesus as Son of God is not a biological but a didactic construct.
  • 4.    Man referring to God as a metaphorical father recurs throughout the Old and New Testaments: the only prayer Jesus gave starts with “Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name …”
  • 5.    Take into consideration, revise and teach: Simile, Metaphor, Sign, Signified, Signifier and Cognate Meaning.
  • 6.    Variation in form and expression alone cannot change the cognate of a translated text.
  • 7.    The ‘Christian world’ consists of secular nation-states, with a strict separation of church and state resulting in only national interest policies. The slaughter of the two world wars is credited to Christian-majority countries.
  • 8.    Christianity has no concept of Ummah, only Sha’ab, if at all.
  • 9.   Enlarge the Blasphemy laws to admit Christians, allowing them to defend their belief system against blasphemy by all other belief systems, with the same penalty, irrespective of their percentage in the population.
  • 10.  Break bread with your Christian neighbours, and share your faith peacefully and by example.
  • Then, over time, Pakistan’s lush orchards will become truly fruitful and revert to being signifiers of peace and prosperity and, their poets’ lyrics will no longer resonate emptiness in harmony.

References

Picture design by Anumita Roy


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Azam Gill
Azam Gill is a novelist, analyst and retired Lecturer from Toulouse University, France. He has authored eight books, including three thrillers — Blood Money, Flight to Pakistan and Blasphemy. He also writes for The Express Tribune, a New York Times affiliate, blogs on his website and is a Contributing Editor for The Big Thrill, a webzine of the International Association of Thriller Writers. He served in the French Foreign Legion, French Navy, and the Punjab Regiment.
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Azam Gill is a novelist, analyst and retired Lecturer from Toulouse University, France. He has authored eight books, including three thrillers — Blood Money, Flight to Pakistan and Blasphemy. He also writes for The Express Tribune, a New York Times affiliate, blogs on his website and is a Contributing Editor for The Big Thrill, a webzine of the International Association of Thriller Writers. He served in the French Foreign Legion, French Navy, and the Punjab Regiment.
1 Comment
  1. Farrukh Mehdi Khan 4 months ago
    Reply

    It is an excellent article written with zeal and very sensible and fine tuned words, it is written with respect and it is an eye opener for those who have a misunderstanding of the Christian Belief. Yes, I totally agree that the Muslim scholars must paly an active role cultivating an environment which leads to peace and harmony among the people of Pakistan. But unfortunately some of the scholars of the Muslim faith are contributing to the problem. Even the government at provincial and national level has done nothing to curb the street terrorism and justice system, the judiciary and the law enforcement authorities are watching doing zero corrective action or even addressing the issue at a national level. Christian and Hindu girls are being kidnapped and raped, forcibly converted in thousands each year or fake documents produced of their conversion to deceive the law. National conference was called and Mian Mithu a PPP leader from Sind, who is behind this whole crime was part of the conference. Police comes into action after the damage is done. This cannot be resolved unless all aid, assistance, student visas, immigration and business deals totally stopped with Pakistan by the world until they do a corrective action. It should be brought at UNO and in each country we live in. This is a country where the person who murdered the governor of the largest province is being respected and honored as a hero and even politicians visit his grave. God bless your heart brother for writing a much needed article, especially addressing the Christian representatives in the house and the so called Christian leaders.

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