Blasphemy

In the 1990s I visited Pakistan regularly on behalf of a non-governmental organization (NGO) that supported religious freedom primarily through public initiatiaves in countries where minority communities were suffering discrimination. In Pakistan I helped organize public seminars in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad in which Muslim and Christian leaders expressed concerns about the blasphemy law-that was used then and in 2018 continues to be used to threaten Christians, Ahmadis, and even some Muslims with prosecution and death. I also traveled with lay leaders of the Christian "colonies" in Karachi and in 1997 visited the burned out village of Shantinagar where 785 houses and 13 churches had been destroyed. According to the Center for Social Justice in Lahore, between 1987 and 2016 at least 1,472 people were charged under the blasphemy law. In 2010 a Christian mother of five was sentenced to death, and in 2018 the persecution of Christians under this law continues. The NGO that I led sponsored the activities described in this novel, but we failed in our efforts to have Pakistan's Supreme Court rule that the blasphemy law was unconstitutional. This story is fiction, but reflects the facts of a struggle against the blasphemy law in Pakistan. I didn't publish this novel when I wrote it in 1999, because I felt it might endanger the Pakistani Christians known by the government to have been involved in the events of this narrative. During the following decade most of the Christian leaders who were active in these events fled Pakistan, legally or illegally. Now, I believe, there is no one left in Pakistan who might be endangered by this novel's publication. The story begins with a march in Karachi protesting the burning of a Christian village in the Punjab named Shantinagar, after a Muslim alleged that a villager had desecrated a Qur'an. Thugs and police attack the demonstration, and some marchers are arrested and injured. Fr. Paul Gill, who participated in the march, meets with lay leaders from the Christian "colonies" in Karachi where the demonstrators live. He volunteers to petition the Pakistani Supreme Court to find the blasphemy law unconstitutional, because it doesn't require evidence of any intention or motive but only testimony that a Muslim has been offended by an alleged desecration. With the assistance of an American leader from an international NGO and two Muslim lawyers, the Christian lay leaders sponsor public seminars in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad that include Muslim and Christian leaders. Thugs attack one of these, and Christians are injured and arrested. Subplots include the worship lives of Fr. Paul and Sister Martha who assists him in his mission with drug addicts, and the personal stories of the Muslim lawyers whose families suffered due to cultural prejudice and police corruption. The novel ends without a strategy for realizing greater tolerance in Pakistan, but with inspiring acts of faith. The interpretations of Christian faith and Islamic beliefs expressed in the novel, primarily through the character of Fr. Paul, are entirely my own. A Catholic priest was not among those who invited me to Pakistan, nor did a priest speak in the public seminars that were held. There was in the 1990s and still is a Human Rights Commission in Pakistan. I did meet with Muslim lawyers and scholars who defended Islamic views of religious freedom. But none of the Muslim or Christian characters in this novel represents any actual persons in Pakistan. Nor do the personal views of the NGO leader in the novel always reflect my own thinking and convictions. The novel explores Christian and Muslim teachings about human rights and especially religious freedom, and relates the author's search for a Christian perspective that respects the conflicts in these religious traditions while affirming the common quest within each to be faithful to the one God who is merciful and just.