Christianity in Pakistan

Christians make up one of the two largest (non-Muslim) religious minorities in Pakistan, along with Hindus.[3] The total number of Christians in Pakistan was estimated at 4.0 million in 2020, or 2% of the population.

Quotes

• As the Pakistani journalist Khaled Ahmed wrote: When ideology stiffened under the pious military ruler, General Zia, Nawaz Sharif was with him, following the lead given by him and didn’t object when the laws against blasphemy and desecration of the Quran were passed and even made more draconian. Zakat tax meant to be spent on the poor can’t be spent on non-Muslims who are counted among the poorest communities in Pakistan. Muslims who are born in Christian hospitals and study in English-medium schools funded by Christian charity don’t mind if poor Christians are not helped with Muslim charity.
  • Khaled Ahmed. Quoted in Indian Express [1]

• [Hindus and Christians in Pakistan] face continued threats to their security and are subject to various forms of harassment and social exclusion.
  • 2019 Annual Report, USCIRF. Quoted in Denial of food to Hindus, Christians in Pakistan 'reprehensible': US government By Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury Apr 14, 2020

• To fully understand this drama, we must bear in mind a few events which did not take place because they could not have taken place. No missionary has stepped in and courted martyrdom to defend the tribals and Hindus of Pakistan, in fact no missionary was around when the initial massacres took place in East Pakistan, because the missions have disinvested in Pakistan. The missions in Islamic countries find their converts harassed and even killed by their own families, their schools and churches attacked on all kinds of pretext, their graduates not given jobs. So, the missionary headquarters prefer to direct their energies to more hospitable countries like India. The fact that a missionary was killed by a "Hindu" while defending the Muslims, and not the other way round, proves in the first place that Catholic priests can function in India, much more than in Pakistan... [Nehru] himself (and the entire secularist establishment till today) reneged on his duty to defend the non-Muslims surviving in the Islamic state which he had helped to create. In the Nehru-Liaqat Pact of 1950, he had given up every right to interfere on behalf of the minorities in Pakistan. By effectively condoning the persecution of non-Muslims in Pakistan, he must accept a share in the responsibility for the retaliatory tribal violence which killed Rasschaert.
  • Elst, K. Father Rasschaert's martyrdom, India, Shanti Darshan Belgo-Indian Association (1996) [2]

• It is rewarding to be a missionary in India, and much safer than China or Pakistan.... These media give far less coverage to the numerous acts of terror against Pakistani Christians, because it would only make things worse for them. So they save their fire for the propaganda war against the Hindus, who have given Christians hospitality for a full sixteen centuries, and who today give them facilities and constitutional privileges which contrast with the restraints imposed on them in most Asian countries. Since the missionaries have no hope of converting Pakistan, they concentrate on converting India and consequently vilify Hinduism much more than Islam.
  • Elst, Koenraad. The Problem of Christian Missionaries , 7 June 1999. [3]

• I think often of persecuted peoples: the Rohingya, the poor Uyghurs, the Yazidi -- what ISIS did to them was truly cruel -- or Christians in Egypt and Pakistan killed by bombs that went off while they prayed in church.
  • Pope Francis says in the book, "Let Us Dream: The Path to A Better Future," published on November 23, 2020. CNN News

• “In spite of the assurance given by the Qaid-i-Azam Christians are being ill-treated in the West Punjab. The rights of the Christians are being crushed in every form of life. We have, again and again, made representations to the Prime Minister of Pakistan and to the West Punjab Cabinet for our protection.”
  • Mr. William Joseph, President, All-Pakistan Christian League, Lahore, Civil & Military Gazette: May 19, 1947. in : **Talib, S. G. S. (1950). Muslim League Attack on Sikhs and Hindus inthe Punjab, 1947. Amritsar: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee. [4] [5] [6] [7] p 239

• Christians, being neutral in the struggle and not the target of persecution, did not migrate in great numbers... They marked their homes with crosses... testifying later as to how the cross had saved them from physical death - an illustration of the power of Christ's cross to save from eternal death as well.
  • During the time of the Partition of India. Frederick and Margaret Stock, People movements in Punjab, Bombay 1978 , p. 180. , and in Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". p 975.