Email:

Lent Prayer - Pakistan

To

Email address:

Separate multiple addresses with a comma (,). Maximum of 10

From

Your name:

Your email address:

Security test:
Please enter the numbers that appear here in the box below.

Security code:

Details provided here will never be used in any other context

Published: 00:01 GMT Standard Time - Friday 23 March 2012

Lent Prayer - Pakistan

Country/Region: South and East Asia, Pakistan

Amber, a 12-year-old Christian girl, was kidnapped by two armed Muslim men in Lahore who held her hostage for eight months. Her captors raped her, tricked her into marriage and tried, without success, to compel her to convert to Islam. In September 2011, Amber was able to escape. When her parents tried to register the crime with the police, they were told that, as Amber had married and converted to Islam, she should go back to her husband. An estimated 700 Pakistani Christian girls are kidnapped annually and forcibly married to their Muslim captors. As with Amber, the government does little to protect them, and few perpetrators are brought to justice.

Barnabas Aid supports
the Christian school in
that this Christian girl attends

This lawlessness is part of a larger picture of social and legal discrimination against the 5 million-strong Christian minority in Pakistan. As a result, most can get only menial and low-paid jobs, living in poverty and despised by their Muslim neighbours. Discrimination also happened during the distribution of aid after the catastrophic floods of 2010 and 2011, when Christians were sometimes left out. Sharia has a significant place in public life.

Those who stand up for the rights of Christians do so at the risk their lives. On 16 November 2011 Jameel Sawan, a preacher and champion of minority rights, was gunned down in Karachi. He had previously received death threats, and the attackers are suspected to be Islamists.

Religious extremism and violence against non-Muslims are growing in Pakistan, often fuelled by the notorious “blasphemy laws”. In September 2011 a Christian girl accidentally misspelled a word in class, which was interpreted by her teacher as a deliberate insult to Muhammad. After hearing about the incident, enraged Muslims demanded her expulsion from school. Her family were forced to move away to another area because of threats.

Pray for the large, downtrodden Christian minority in , that they will be able to run with perseverance the race marked out for them (Hebrews 12:1). Pray that the government will repeal the blasphemy laws and start protecting Christians. Pray for Aasia Bibi, a Christian mother on death row, and other Christians unjustly imprisoned under the blasphemy laws, that the Lord will strengthen and sustain them. Pray for the protection of Christian girls who are targets of sexual assaults by Muslim men, that they may experience God’s nearness through their ordeal and that justice may be done for them. Pray for the thousands of Christians recovering from the floods.