Pakistan

The three young children of a Christian couple jailed on baseless charges of desecrating the Koran in Lahore, Pakistan last week have no relatives to care for them and are extremely upset, a rights advocate said.

A pastor was shot and wounded by hardline Muslims on Sunday evening (Sept. 3) in Jaranwala, Pakistan a week after Islamist slogans were written on the walls of his church building, sources said.

Church and rights leaders in Pakistan are demanding an investigation into anti-Christian rioting in Jaranwala amid illegal arrests of area Christians and a police claim of a “foreign conspiracy” to create religious strife, sources said.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Tuesday (Aug. 29) ordered the government to respond to a petition to stop courts from allowing forced conversion and marriage of minority girls in verdicts that act as covers for child rape, sources said.

Perhaps you’ve heard the news. Fires torching hundreds of properties. Entire households burned to the ground. Every personal belonging lost. Thousands of lives destroyed. The devastation has been unprecedented, and it will take years to rebuild that which can be rebuilt. But the personal tragedies and lives lost may never heal.

If you’re in the West, you may have heard about the tremendous loss in Maui, Hawaii. Wildfires have left a trail of death and destruction. As horrible as that is, that’s not what I am writing about today.

While Maui was burning in what was an act of God, Christian communities in Pakistan have been burning, torched to the ground, not as an act of God but as an act of evil.

Police in Pakistan on Saturday night (Aug. 19) charged a Christian with blasphemy for uploading on TikTok a video of content that last week led to attacks on Christian homes and businesses in Jaranwala more than 100 kilometers away, sources said.

Instigated by mosque leaders, Muslim mobs on Wednesday (Aug. 16) burned 20 church buildings and ransacked Christian homes and businesses in Jaranwala, Pakistan, after a Muslim framed two Christians in a false blasphemy case, a relative said.

A judge is allowing a Catholic to be charged with blasphemy under Pakistan’s anti-terrorism law, which his attorney said is “illegal and illogical.”

A third accusation of blasphemy in less than a month compelled Christians fearful of Islamic retribution to flee their homes in an eastern city in Pakistan this week, sources said.

Police in Pakistan on Tuesday (July 11) kept a Christian charged with blasphemy from appearing at his bail hearing, compelling a judge to bow to pressure from a crowd of slogan-shouting Muslims and deny his release, sources said.