Another martyr for Christ in Pakistan

I received this e-mail this morning from a contact in Pakistan. It dawned on me that I had been in correspondence with Rashid Emmanuel for the past two years. We even gave to his ministry a few times. Rashid will be greatly missed.


My Dear Brother Aaron,
We are sorry to inform you that:
Today July 19, 2010. Muslim extremists shot dead Rahid Emmanuel and Sajjid Emmanuel in broad daylight in front of hundreds of people in district courts compound in Faisalabad today.

There were rumors and reports on July 18, 2010, that both of Christian brothers are free to go home from Civil Lines Police Station Faisalabad where they were detained on July 4, 2010, under blasphemy charges on complaint of one Muslim businessman of Railway Bazar because police told friends of Rashid and Sajjid that there is no proof found against them which may extend their detention.

Today, investigation officer Mohammad Hussian produced Rashid Emmanuel and Sajjid Emmanuel before Judge in District Courts where he testified that police have investigated allegations leveled against them but found no proof that they may be charged under blasphemy.

Police investigating officer Mohammad Hussian told court that complainant Mohammad Khuram Shehzad lodged FIR alleging Rashid Emmanuel and Sajjid Emmanuel producing a handwritten leaflet which he stressed is defiling Prophet Mohammad but police have report of Handwriting expert that pamphlet handwriting presented by Mohammad Khuram not match with handwriting of accused Christian brothers. Police further submitted that they have nothing to investigate against them and find no proof to remand them in custody.

The court ordered to send Rashid Emmanuel and Sajjid Emmanuel to Judicial custody till next date to issue further orders.

As there were rumors that Rashid Emmanuel and Sajjid Emmanuel are found innocent and will be released, the extremists Muslims reached in District Courts Faisalabad and were waiting for them to come out of court house.

As Rashid Emmanuel and Sajjid Emmanuel were walking towards district courts custody cell with police, the unidentified gunmen opened fire and Rashid Emmanuel felt on ground.

Sajjid Emmanuel stepped to safe his brother but gunmen shot him down too. When police tried to fire back on gunmen, they also came under attack and Inspector Mohammad Hussain felt down on ground.

In minutes, masked gunmen fled from scene, till medical aid reach, Rashid Emmanuel died on spot while Sajjid Emmanuel and police officer were rushed to hospital, where they were pronounced dead till our posting this sad incident.

The leaders of Christian Lawyers Foundation, Rao Naveed Zafar Bhatti Advocate reported that adequate security was not in district court which made easy for killers to fled from scene.

Pastor Rashid Emmanuel was 32 years of age and running a Ministry while his brother Sajjid Emmanuel was helping him in Lords word.

.According to government reports, a blasphemy case was registered on 1st July, 2010, under section 295- C PPC, against Rashid Emanuel and Sajid Emanuel of 30 years of age who were residents of Street No.5 Daud Nagar, Faisalabad, Pakistan and arrested by police on July 4, 2010.

Muhammad Khuram Shezad merchant of Railway Bazar, Faisalabad, had complained that his servant told him that both Christian accused were distributing pamphlets in open bazar which is desecrating Prophet Mohammad and their numbers are under the writing of the Pamphlet. He went to PS and told fabricated story to police to charge 2 Christian young men under blasphemy.

The Muslims took out a procession on July 10, 2010, when they burnt tires and pelted stones on Catholic Church Warispura Faisalabad. The mob threatened that if these brothers are not executed according to Muslim law, the mob will exact revenge not only on them, but the entire Christian community.

Please remember our christians in your prayers.
God bless you all,

Persecution in Pakistan continues

Below is an e-mail I received this morning from one of our contacts in Pakistan:

The call to hunt Christian launched at local mosques after the Friday prayers on September 11, 2009. The mob stormed and set fire to the church, ransacked two houses. Muslims accuse a young Christian Robert Danish had desecrated the Quran.

A church burnt by a mob of angry Muslims, who attacked Christians for a new- alleged- case of blasphemy. This is what happened in a village Jaithikey, around 20 kilometers from Sialkot, Punjab, where the Christian community has targeted by Islamic extremists. The extremists were protesting against the desecration of the Quran by a young Christian around 12:30 local time, a Muslim mob gathered and damaged the buildings then set it on fire. The extremists also looted two houses adjoining the church.

The young man was accused of teasing the girl and “throwing away the Quran had in her hands”. No one can agree with the idea that Muslim women might fall in love with a Christian man. It’s clear that utterances against the Quran are just lame excuses to attack Christians. Christians are increasingly persecuted by Islamic fundamentalist.

Robert Danish was arrested under section 295 B on September 11, 2009, Vide FIR # 1176/207/09 on Sambarial police station on complaint of Mohmmad Asghar Ali resident of village Jaithikey. He accused that Robert Masih to push her daughter Hina Ali who was coming home after Quran recitation and he took Quran Supare from his daughter and threw it in drain. In that village 40 Christian families are living with Muslims over a century with harmony and peace.

He was produced before the local magistrate and sent to judicial custody in Sialkot central jail where he was killed. According to his family and relatives they don't believe the fabricated story of Jail authorities about committing suicide. He was torture so badly, there were cuts on his forehead, wrist, legs and neck. He wasn't coward as he himself present to police. His father refuse to have funeral inSialkot, they strike against the police officials along many Christians and they were baton by police and gas shelling being used to scatter the Christian mob. Finally they were not allowed to burry him in the village.

This incident was plotted by a local Muslim Cleric who hangs banners during Gojra incident to "Kill the blasphemers". Such people are funded by foreign Jihads organizations. In fact Taliban has already threat to strike Punjab's main cities. As whole world know that these fundamental organizations were involved in the Anti- Christian attacks in Gojra in the beginning of August where several people were killed.

Increasing violence against Christian under blasphemy has created fear among 20 million Christian in Pakistan. With 18 Christians accused of blasphemy and seven towns had been attacked this year so far. Muslims are misusing the blasphemy law to torture Christians without fear of any punishment after the violence in Korian and Gojra, there is a real risk of a new massacre against the Christian community in the name of blasphemy law. There was great weave of anger and grief among Christian of Pakistan after the accessnation of Robert Danish. BEM have strongly condemned killing of innocent Christian and demanded to arrest the killers.

More then 35 Christian families are still compelled to live out side the village as Muslims usurp their homes. No Christian is allowed in the village even visitors. There are reports that some Christian being torture by Muslims who went to see the burnt homes and Church. Please pray for these Christian people who became homeless. Their children are missing classes which is unbearable loss of their lives. They have to get admissions in new schools and get new books and uniforms, which is pile on the agony.

Please remember Christian of Pakistan in your personal prayers especially victim of Jaithikay. They deserve your moral and spiritual support in this difficult time, as they face the frustration of Muslims regarding 9/11 on the same day. May God bless you abundantly as you bless them with your prayers.

Both sides of the "culture war" need to broaden their human rights agenda

Last week, radical Muslims in Pakistan began terrorizing the Christian minority in the town of Gojra. At least 9 people were killed, over a hundred homes were burned to the ground, and several church buildings were destroyed. The reign of terror has lasted several days and has spread to neighboring areas. I get daily reports from my Christian friends in Pakistan and, as far as I can tell, what’s happening is eerily similar to the anti-Christian violence that took place in India last year where, according to Asia News, around 500 people were killed.

Unless human rights advocates worldwide and the U.S. government in particular puts pressure on the Pakistani government to clamp down on attacks against Christians—and to repeal the blasphemy law that allows Muslims to trump up charges against anyone who supposedly “insults Islam”—more Christians will likely be killed. Pakistan’s Christians have been complaining for years that the Western media has largely overlooked their plight. They also say that their government fails to protect them from Islamic extremism, discriminates heavily against them when it comes to jobs, civil services, and even aid relief when natural disasters strike. Think Earthquake 2006.

To be sure, Christians in the global south aren’t the only group suffering under the weight of religious oppression. Even in Pakistan, some say that the Shiite minority has it harder than the Christians. In Sri Lanka, people in the Tamil minority (comprised mostly of Hindus) feel that the Buddhist majority oppresses them. There’s also India’s caste system and its treatment of the Dalits (the untouchables in Hinduism); arguably history’s longest standing system of religiously motivated apartheid. Still, when it comes to oppression against religious minorities, the ones doing the oppressing seem to get a free pass—especially when it comes to persecution against Christians. Over the years, I’ve heard a lot in the media about the persecution of gays and women in Iran, hardly a peep about Iran’s brutal crackdown on Muslim converts to Christianity.

That’s my beef with the so-called “secular” media and, to a lesser extent; secular human rights advocates. Now for the bombshell directed at my own side. If you haven’t guessed already, I’m an evangelical Christian. I despise the label because it conjures up a lot of negative stereotypes, but for lack of a better term, that’s what I am. I think that many, if not most, Americans see evangelical Christians as either indifferent to or ignorant of human rights issues. I got a sense of this when I attended a local Amnesty International meeting a few months back. It was my first time there and the leader made a snide remark against “Jesus people” because she assumed that there couldn’t be anyone like me at the meeting.

I left the meeting feeling sad. I realized that somewhere, somehow, a lot of people got the impression that the more a person loves Jesus, the less that person’s going to care about human rights. I decided to test this impression by sending out an e-mail to hundreds of my evangelical friends asking them to sign a petition for the release of Aung Sun Suu Kyi, Burma’s leader of the democracy movement that has been unjustly imprisoned for the last 19 years for the “crime” of winning a democratic election. I received very few responses, but one response stood out. “I want to make sure this is actually from you and not some left-wing propaganda.” I don’t fault the person for doing his due diligence. I’m just saddened that such a clear-cut unambiguous issue had to be cast into terms of left verses right, liberal verses conservative. A genuine human rights issue was slain at the altar of the “culture war.”

So here’s my proposal. Many evangelical Christians like me would like to see secular media and human rights advocates put a greater emphasis on the vastly under-reported persecution of Christians worldwide. On the other hand, I sense that secular media and human rights advocates would like to see evangelical Christians like myself take a larger role on issues like nuclear disarmament, torture, women’s rights, racial discrimination, and the freeing of people that have been unjustly imprisoned because of their religion, political persuasion, and—yes—sexual orientation.

Frankly, I agree. I’d like to see my evangelical brothers and sisters play a larger role in human rights issues. Abortion and gay marriage will likely always be a stale mate, but that doesn’t mean that evangelicals and non-evangelicals can’t work together on a vast array of other human rights issues. Thankfully, there are organizations like Jim Wallis’s “Sojourners” and Ron Sider’s “Evangelicals for Social Action” that are ahead of the curve on this one. Unfortunately, the numbers aren’t large enough to change the current stereotype of evangelicals as that of depraved indifference to human rights issues. If both sides would broaden their agendas, remove the planks from their own eyes, and reach out to the other side, perhaps we could work together to make a better world.

Aaron D. Taylor is the author of “Alone with a Jihadist: A Biblical Response to Holy War.” Aaron can be contacted at http://www.aarondtaylor.com Follow Aaron on Twitter at www.twitter.com/aarondtaylor