Luke
21:5-19
This is section 295 of the Pakistani
Penal Code.[1]
“Whoever destroys,
damages or defiles any place of worship, or any object held sacred by any class
of persons with the intention of thereby insulting the religion of any class of
persons or with the knowledge that any class of persons is likely to consider
such destruction, damage or defilement as an insult to their religion shall be
punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to
two years, or with fine, or with both.”
That doesn’t sound
too unreasonable to me. It strikes me as
very similar to American laws forbidding what we call “hate crimes”. Pakistan, however, has laws that privilege
Islam over all other religions. That
results in sections 295-B and 295-C of that same Penal Code.
“Whoever willfully
defiles, damages or desecrates a copy of the Holy Qur’an or of an extract
therefrom or uses it in any derogatory manner or for any unlawful purpose shall
be punishable with imprisonment for life.”
“Whoever by words,
either spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation,
innuendo, or insinuation directly or indirectly defiles the sacred name of the
Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or
imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.”
Section 298 extends
that protection of reputation to Mohammed’s family and then specifically
condemns certain branches of Islam that it declares, basically, heretical.
So if you are a Christian living in
Pakistan, and someone asks you what you believe about Mohammed, what do you
say? Do you refer to him, as the law of
the land does, as “the Holy Prophet” when you do not believe him to be a prophet
at all? Despite the official protection
of one part of the law, if you express disbelief in what he claims was the
revelation of God to him, does that not amount to calling him (at best)
mistaken or (at worst) a deliberate liar?
And if you do that, are you not in violation of laws that carry the
death penalty?
There has been a spate of
accusations in the past several years brought against Pakistani Christians (and
Hindus, also) under these laws. A lot of
people, meaning Pakistani people – and Muslims of good conscience among them –
have pointed out that the accusations have been known to arise from personal
vendettas or in situations where the accuser (“Abracadabra!”) stood to benefit
in some direct way from the conviction of the accused. All the same, we have seen the bombing of
churches and the murder of Christians by angry mobs under the guise of
religious zeal, and it is incumbent on us to speak up about it, just as it is
when a synagogue or a mosque is vandalized in our country.
I say this because we sometimes
forget that the Church is universal. We
are part of those people in Pakistan and they are part of us. The words of the Bible may seem distant to us
at times, but I wonder what the Christians of South Asia hear when these words
fall on their ears:
“…they will arrest you and persecute you; they
will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before
kings and governors because of my name. This
will give you an opportunity to testify. So
make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom
that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents
and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my
name. But not a hair of your head
will perish. By your endurance
you will gain your souls.”
[Luke 21:12-19]
The
heart of that is that turbulent times and the troubles that characterize them “give you an opportunity to testify.” In good times and safe places, like ours, we
can and do become complacent and far too often that means that we tend not to
share our faith in any way. When the
hard times come, then, we only bemoan our problems and fail to see them as an
opportunity.
Our
troubles do not compare to those of Christians who are denied employment for
their faith or who see their homes destroyed or who cannot send their children
to school. We do, however, all face the
common problems of human life that face everyone on earth. We have times of illness. We see the hopes and the work of decades come
to nothing. We watch families fall
apart. There are terrible accidents and
natural disasters. Hamlet spoke of
“the heartache and the
thousand natural shocks
that flesh is heir to.”
When
those come along, do we or do we not use them as an opportunity to testify to
the faithfulness of Christ? Do we or do
we not both remember and declare,
“Even
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I
will fear no evil, for you are with me.
Your
rod and your staff, they comfort me.
You
prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies,
You
anoint my head with oil.
My
cup runs over. …”?
I
am not happy that the Church is troubled anywhere in the world, but I do praise
God that in places where that happens, there are people who faithfully repeat
those ancient words, and demonstrate them.
Maximilian Kolbe was a Catholic
priest who, early in his life, may have held and shared some anti-Jewish
prejudice, but in the midst of Nazi-occupied Poland he hid two thousand Jews in
the monastery where he was the superior.
In 1941, the Nazis arrested him and he ended up in Auschwitz. While he was there, a man from his barracks
went missing and the deputy camp commander picked ten men to be starved to
death as an example to others. One of
the men chosen began to cry out, not for himself, but because of his
family. Kolbe, who did not even know
him, volunteered to take his place.
During the three long weeks of torture ahead, he led the others in songs
and prayer. At the end of that time,
starving and dehydrated, four men, including Kolbe, were still, although
barely, alive. They were then murdered
by the injection of carbolic acid.[2]
Not many, thankfully, face those
circumstances. Not many find their
likeness, like Kolbe’s, carved onto the front of Westminster Abbey. But how many people do bear witness at the
end of their lives that they can face death calmly because they know where they
are going? How many accept the
turbulence of life calmly, knowing that God will see then through? How many sing, with full confidence,
“I sing because I’m
happy,
I sing because I’m
free;
For his eye is on the
sparrow,
And I know he watches
me.
His eye is on the
sparrow,
And I know he watches
me.”
Maybe, just maybe,
there is someone here who, by doing that, will bear witness in just the way
that Christians have done throughout the ages and, by God’s grace, will do
until the end of time. Whoever you are,
thank God for you.
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