Jesuit Father Frank Brennan has just returned from Lahore, where he found a country on edge and Christians with special cause for concern over the notorious blasphemy laws.

Father Frank Brennan

LAHORE, Pakistan (UCAN) — Last Sunday I attended a church service presided over by the Archbishop of Lahore, Lawrence Saldanha. There were armed guards at the entrance to the church plus nine plainclothes police placed in the congregation.

Pakistanis do not know whom to trust at this time.

Christians, who are less than 2 percent of the population, have cause to be on edge, for their fears are compounded by ongoing discrimination and a blasphemy law which has had catastrophic consequences.

With coups and increasing Muslim fundamentalism, Pakistan has strayed long past the declaration of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, its founding father. Jinnah proclaimed in 1947: “You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the state.”

The notorious blasphemy law in this Islamic state makes any derogatory remark about Prophet Muhammad, even indirectly or by innuendo, punishable by death.

This law has given license to Pakistanis seeking revenge against each other in the name of religion. On Sept. 16 a young Christian man arrested for blasphemy was killed in police custody. His family had to flee their home and the police claimed that he committed suicide in his cell.

In the run-up to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent charm-offensive in the country, the Pakistan Christian Action Forum, which represents all major Christian Churches in Pakistan, issued a statement calling for immediate repeal of the blasphemy law:

“Several incidents in the current year have perturbed the nation where the minority communities were victimized under the false accusation of having desecrated the Holy Qur’an. Such acts of violence have grown sharply under the pretext of the Blasphemy Law, which is blatantly abused to cause harassment and marginalization of religious minorities, especially the Christians.”

Gojra Christians outside homes destroyed in the August violence

Christians are still terrified by the events of August 2009, sparked by alleged sacrilege against the Qur’an by an illiterate Christian man in the village of Korian, in Punjab province. About 3,000 Muslims went on a rampage through the nearby township of Gojra. They destroyed the homes of 140 Christian families. Seven people were burned alive and another two died later.

Archbishop Saldanha told me: “The blasphemy law is the root cause of our problems. It is a law that can be misused at any time. If you are a ‘good Muslim,’ you cannot be seen to oppose this law.”

Anecdotally one hears stories of the blasphemy law being invoked in all manner of petty feuds and disagreements. Recently, a Christian who had upset a Muslim in a gambling game found himself subject to a blasphemy complaint.

A group called Minorities Concern of Pakistan have a newsletter which reported in September an interview with some of the Gojra Christians.

One man told them: “They killed us because we are Christians and we are poor. They were calling us dogs and American agents.”

Most Pakistanis, meanwhile, are very wary about the United States, and not just because US administrations have chopped and changed allegiances to militant groups in Pakistan. Muslim Pakistanis especially are very mistrustful of those who sponsored the Iraq War and who committed the atrocities at Abu Ghraib.

If things start to improve in Pakistan, greater cooperation between the United States, the civilian government and the Pakistani military may ensure that the Taliban militants and Al Qaeda are more contained. But military hardware alone is not going to be the answer.

While some of the best schools in the country have been told they are on hit lists, and ordinary schools have to close periodically and then expend precious resources on armed guards and security devices, there was a report during the week of Hillary Clinton’s visit that enrollment in madrassah, Islamic boarding schools, had increased by 40 percent in the last academic year.

Madrassah graduates do not tend to have much sympathy for those campaigning against blasphemy laws. They know nothing of Jinnah’s original vision for Pakistan.

This past weekend the Jesuit school in Lahore celebrated its silver jubilee.

Inside the school walls, and under the watchful eye of the armed guard and security personnel, Christian and Muslim children learn and play together, daily espousing the school motto, “Unity and Integrity.”

Ordinary Pakistanis are crying out for both. But whom do you trust once you walk outside the school gate?

Jesuit Father Frank Brennan is a professor at the Public Policy Institute, Australian Catholic University. This is an abridged version of an article that original appeared on the website Eureka Street.