Images of atrocities and natural devastation highlight Pakistan's failings in Karachi and the aftermath of last years flooding. Scottish Parliament a force for good in a dark world.

Whilst travelling to Scotland last week I visited the Scottish Parliament and was intrigued by the photo collection on display there.  The collection focused on world atrocities and natural disasters.

The Haitian Earthquake, Rio's slums and killings in Africa featured heavily.  What really struck me though, was a display on Pakistan, it described killings in Karachi, highlighting the awful and ever present danger of death by gunshot, a consequence of simply living in this lawless Pakistani town. 

Only recently I posted the story of Pervais Masih a Christian shot dead in a purported land grab incident in the very same city.  So for me it was a pleasant surprise to see this attempt by Scottish Parliament to highlight the awful societal breakdown existing in Karachi.  Let us pray that this display becomes a stimulus for change in a broken down nation.

Mention of religious persecution was ever so slightly mentioned but at least it drew a much wider global attention to the sectarianism and inequalities of Karachi and Pakistan in general.

Apologies for the obscure image my cousin's phone could not shade out the bright light.

I believe my cousin's finger caused the orange glow, however, you can still feel the ensuing panic after a shooting took place.

There were also images of the flood devastation from last year.

People caught in the deluge can be seen struggling to find a sure footing in city awash with flood water and heavy debris.

This image of a child sleeping out in the open with no protection form adverse weather and infestation, brings home the need for assistance for this beleaguered nation.  The BPCA is still continuing it flood support details of which can be found by clicking on our appeals link at the top of this blog.

The severe wind would no doubt have created an unbearable wind chill factor.  However, many of these hard people survived.

A father and son walking through the deep water, how must they have felt as they watched their worldly possessions disappear before them.  For the Christian communities I am aware that belief in God, his love and his promise of support, was a comforting vision.

This is an image of the overall display regarding Pakistan - part of a much larger global collection.  If you are travelling to Scotland this display in the Scottish Parliament Foyer is a must see.  So a trip to the romantic setting of Edinburgh is requisite, besides the world famous Fringe Festival does not end till the end of the month.  


Even on holiday I cannot forget about our suffering brothers in Pakistan...

John 3:7 - who are they?

 Brothers in arms...

 Brave men challenging for God's kingdom on Earth.

If the streets seem empty it is because this group worked long shifts (image taken 2am)...

I have been in Scotland for the last week visiting castles, the Scottish Parliament and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Whilst there I saw a group of people walking around with large yellow signs that said John 3 7, confused by the boards I decided to question them on what they where doing. I realised there was some Christian principle behind what they were doing as the reference seemed to be a scriptural passage indicator.

A few of the members of the group advised me that they were a group that started in Ireland and that they toured events using the boards as an opportunity to conduct outreach.  You can imagine their pleasure when I told them I was Chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association.  My cousins and I enjoyed a good 20 minutes in their company and they have agreed to bring 40 members to our next protest on the 3rd March 2011.

This group although pentecostal in nature and members collaborated with the Church of Scotland to organise this outreach at the centre of the Edinburgh Fringe on the Royal Mile.   We prayed with them before leaving and it was so remarkable how God can remind us of his presence in such a pleasant way that it accentuates the joy's of holidays and tripos and gives them a deeper spiritual meaning.  I cannot guarantee that God wanted me to meet with this group, but I can conform that I believe he did.  I can also conform that I believe this hard working group will be a real blessing at our protest and that their mission is one I support.

The verse referred to on their placard reads as follows:

Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’"

The group is struggling to gain bibles for distribution and I am wondering if anyone reading this could advise of any that are freely available or purchasable at competitive price.

I read up about them on Wikipedia the report there is small but very interesting:

(Click here)

Where it's even worse.....

In the last post we talked about the latest case of the kidnap of Christian girls and their rape, forced conversion and marriage in Pakistan, and noted that it was happening at the rate of (at least) one a week. Spare a thought for our brothers and sisters, the Copts of Egypt. After the 'Arab Spring' Wahhabi and Salafist movements have mushroomed with funding from Saudi Arabia. These groups are paying Muslims per convert. Unsurprisingly, the rate of abduction has shot up in past while. In one city alone the rate is 2-3 per day. Muslim University students are encouraged to get close to and sexually violate Coptic girls in the age range of 9 to 15. The tactic is to sexually blackmail them and shame them in front of their parents (photographs etc) to coerce them to run away and thus be more vulnerable. They are coerced into converting and marrying.

Salafist groups, police and state security combine to provide a strong infrastructure. The girls are held in houses procured especially for the purpose, the police refuse to pay attention to the girls families. And the Salafi groups have set up a group to deliberately counter and smear the efforts of the Coptic community to get the girls back. The Orwellian titled 'Alliance for the Support of New Muslim Females' has staged against the Coptic church, accusing it of kidnapping girls who have converted to Islam.

This new tactic explains why by far the highest proportion of 'converts' to Islam are from young and underage Coptic women. It can't even be (fully) blamed on normal Islamic practice, since it is deemed alright for the husband, the head of the house, to be a Muslim while his wife isn't. It is only deemed detestable if the 'subservient' wife is a Muslim and the husband is not. Thus these events cannot be about some kind of Romeo-Juliet romances across the religious divide. The goal is not the marriage of in love couples but the open promotion of sexual coercion and blackmail to induce conversion to Islam.

Elements of the security forces, courts, police, University officials and Muslim clergy are openly promoting and facilitating this policy. The supposedly 'pious' Muslims are engaging in mass rape and paedophilia and teaching their followers to do the same.

Even before the Revolution such practices were widespread, with tactics used including telling Christian women that their fathers were seriously ill in hospital and asking for them, and then snatching them off the street as they rushed to the hospital, or straight grabbing them from the street and aneasthatising them, marrying them in this condition, gang raping them for weeks, and then divorcing them. Fathers who protest have been accused of 'promoting sectarian strife' by the police and had their homes stolen from them.

Even where such girls are taken into state care homes (in one recent case it seems the girls claimed that they had freely converted to Islam because they feared retribution from their own families) there is intense intimidation, often with no Christian presence in such institutions, and the machinations of Sharia associations and threatening by Hijab encloaked social workers.

For more information see here, here and here.

Yet another kidnap and forced conversion and marriage

It's become a tired, tired old story, because Pakistani culture and corruption and religious discrimination has not changed - at least not for the better. Young Christian girl is kidnapped by a Muslim(s), is forced to convert and to marry her kidnapper - in effect being triply raped - in will and freedom as well as in body. This follows the reports recently about another case which we reported - that of Farah Hatim.

In the latest case, just 20 miles from the capital, Islamabad, a young Christian girl named Mariam Gill went out to the market and never came back. Witnesses saw a local man, an important local businessman, Muhammed Junaid, physically snatching her from the market. He had asked her to marry him and had been refused, so he took the woman he lusted after anyway, by force, and typically, cloaked his rape by claiming he had been a pious Muslim and converted her to Islam. Again, typically, the police prevaricated, refused the application of the distraught family, and treated the Christian family with disdain by showing no interest in the matter. A local police officer, Amir Mirza, praised the culprit as 'a respectable Muslim businessman' and claimed, against all evidence, that the girl had converted and married 'of her own free will'.

Again, typically, the local Muslim religious leader, Maulana Hafeez Aziz, praised the perpetrator of this wickedness as a 'pious Muslim' and a 'true follower of Muhammed' who has 'fulfilled Sharia', who had done an act that 'only a true Muslim could do'. He stated he had 'converted Mariam to Islam' and then 'celebrated' her 'marriage'.

The lies of both the religious and secular authorities became apparent when local officials questioned Mariam. She forthrightly stated that she had been abducted and forced to convert and would not renounce her faith in Christ. The officials ordered that the girl should be returned to her family and the two 'sides' should reach an 'agreement'. However, again typically, Muhammad Junaid showed his approach - he demanded the girl he had violated thrice over be returned to him for his pleasure and continued abuse, or there would be 'terrible consequences'.

Yet again, those who abuse Christian women (and indeed those of other minorities - Hindu girls are fleeing to India in increasing numbers to escape this cadre of sadistic rapists) indulge in a culture of impunity where these perpetrators of serious crimes are praised and lauded as model citizens and religionists while the victims and their families are threatened and intimidated.

The local bishop is quoted as saying 'the cases of forced conversion are rising at an alarming rate. The matter needs to be checked, kidnapping of Christian girls is becoming a common practice in Punjab. Law enforcement agencies need to enforce the law'

Amen to that.

He also says 'It is time to take concrete action to guarantee the safety of minorities in Pakistan'.

Amen to that too.

Thank you to the people at Asia News for bringing this to our attention.

Nehemiah's prayer

With permission from my friend Marcelina from US, I would like to share it with all of you.

So, I have read and re-read the book of Nehemiah in the Bible, and it truly is one of my favorites. But often times I have over-looked the heart-felt prayer Nehemiah displays to the Lord at the beginning of chapter 1. And, like many prayers in the Bible, he starts off his petition with praise to God...mentioning His attributes and His might and His promises. I think to myself, "How many times while I am in distress and worry do I start out my prayer to God in praise of who He is? How many times do I cry out to Him with my needs mentioning the works "thy hands have made"? And mentioning His blessings. He gives that surpasses all understanding?

I often am so busy wanting, wanting, wanting that I don't stop to realize the Giver of all things good, to remind myself the truths of who God is and that He holds it all together. He listens to our needs, and He is a God who wants us to go to Him for our desires and needs. But, how humbling it is to put Him in His proper place as Majesty, Lord, Savior and the "Great I Am" while we are seeking Him for guidance and provision.

Read it and re-read it: (Nehemiah 1:4-11)

⁴As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. ⁵And I said, "O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, ⁶ let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father’s house have sinned. ⁷ We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses. ⁸Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, 'If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples, ⁹ but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.' ¹⁰ They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand. ¹¹O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man."

Amen

Arranged marriage

Queer title for British readers. Let’s be pragmatic. Maybe it can help Pakistani Christians who are afraid their daughters might be kidnapped and forced to marry into a Muslim family and change their faith and forever lose contact with them. Imagine a young girl is raped, her fears, her screams, wanting her mum and a mum somewhere crying, beating her breast because her child has disappeared. Or what’s worse when kidnapped girls are sold into prostitution abroad. So please whenever you see a prostitute, respect her because she is a daughter of somebody because somewhere a mother is crying her heart out for her lost child.

You know when a married woman has children, how she will leave her children. She might despise their father who kidnapped, raped her, forced her to marry him and change her faith to forcibly adopt his, or her in-laws but not her children. They were born of her. I remember Sold ¹ the story of that young British girl who came back to England and left her baby son in Yemen. She was very courageous. She needed her freedom. Most mothers would not do what she did.

If Christians in the free world, wherever they are, can help Pakistani parents to marry off their daughters with committed, single God-fearing Christian men; that will be wonderful. They can avoid this evil and also get freedom and peace of heart and mind. Arranged marriage is common in India in Christian communities. I presume it won’t be different in Pakistan. So maybe this is a pragmatic solution to a terrible but real problem.

We have Christian Asian communities everywhere. Their members are Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Greek Orthodox, Evangelicals, Baptists, Pentecostals, Reformed Baptists and others. They can work together within their respective denominations to help the families in countries where kidnapping is rampant.

We need to pray a lot about it. We need guidance, counselling. Long ago there were knights in shining armour that defended the women of their communities and the prestige of their countries. I pray God will raise these men of valour, modern knights in shining armour who have a compassionate heart and will save these girls from this plight. It is only God who can put the love in them and the desire to do such a noble deed for God’s glory.

And I am sure there are thousands of good respectful Muslims in Pakistan who respect women and will never kidnap a young woman, rape her and force her to marry him, and change her religion. I am addressing these Muslims. You can educate your Muslim brothers who do so. Let them think about their own mothers, sisters. They would not have wanted something like that to happen to them.

In the end life is short. Let’s enjoy it. Let’s be able to sit together and talk peacefully about what differs about religions. Let’s have crazy minds. Let’s all have the guts to say: A Christian:''Jesus is the only way to God,” the bible says so.”A Muslim: “The Koran tells the truth about God, all other ways are wrong.” Or like the Hindu or the Buddhist, “reincarnation is the fate of man and attaining nirvana is the culmination of happiness, and this is the only truth.” The Atheist: “there is only one life and we have to live it to the full on earth. When we die, it’s the end. There is nothing beyond. God does not exist.” And civilised third millennium man will be free to choose his beliefs.

And let each man, woman make a personal choice to believe in a religion either they practise the religion of their parents or they can convert not forcibly but out of their own free choice without any coercion or be an atheist. As I always say, God is God for believers. He can look after mere man He has created. He knows who should go to heaven or hell.

Let’s all face the grim fact. We all fear to die. If we had a choice with choosing to live or to die, I think all of us will choose to live especially when we are free people who can travel, think, talk, act, write, move freely.

I dream one day life will be like that and women will be free to choose their partners, their careers in countries where kidnapping and rape and forced conversion is not punishable by judicial law and approved by religious law.

¹Sold
by Zana Muhsen
(Little Brown & Warner Books)
The true story of Zana Muhsen's years as an enforced child bride in the Yemen. France's biggest non-fiction seller in 1992, it has sold three million copies in Europe. Condensed by Reader's Digest and dramatised for Radio 4, the British paperback edition reprints regularly.

Christian Shot dead by militants on Minority day - when will peace come?!

I have received this sad story of another Christian Man shot dead in the space of a few days in Pakistan.  We publish this story written by Watson Gill of Holland prima facie (sic):

"A Pakistani Christian young man Parvez Masih have been shot dead by Muslim militants in Faisalabad on yesterday .

This shamfull incident happened near the Sargodah Road (boly di chugi area) when Pakistani Christian Parvez Masih was on his way this group was on two motorbikes open fire on him and killed him on the spot.The group of militants who carried out the attack left the scene after checking that target would not survive. His body brought to his residence Chack No 7 GB Faisalabad."