Pakistani Muslims Act as Human Shields for Christian Church

I meant to post this story earlier in the week and as something more than a “Most Wanted”; but got tied up in the day to day. From last Sunday:

Muslims in Pakistan formed a human shield Sunday at a church in Lahore to protect Christians from terrorist attacks. It was the second such demonstration in the past week, following a similar display of Muslim-Christian unity in Karachi.

Christians, many of them poor, form a tiny minority in Pakistan, making up about 3 percent of the Muslim-dominated country’s 180 million population. Recently, terrorist groups have targeted the Christian minority in what one such group says is a protest against United States drone strikes in the country.

On Sept. 22, two suicide bombers blew themselves up at a church in Peshawar, killing more than 80 people and injuring about 130 more. A group calling itself Jundullah claimed responsibility for the bombings, saying that it would continue to target non-Muslims in Pakistan until drone strikes ceased.

“The terrorists showed us what they do on Sundays,” said Mohammed Jibran Nasir, organizer of the human-chain protest. “Here we are showing them what we do on Sundays. We unite.”

At the center of the chain, Muslim cleric Mufti Mohammad Farooq linked hands with the priest at St. Anthony’s Church in Lahore, Father Nasir Gulfam.

The anti-terrorism protesters carried signs reading “Many faiths, one God” and “One Nation, One Blood.” The protest was organized by a group called Pakistan For All.

The Sunday service inside the church, attended by Muslims as well as Christians, was dedicated to prayers for victims of the Sept. 22 attacks.

Muslims defending Christians is not an isolated incident.

Where are the “moderate” Muslims? They exist amongst the 1.5 billion who identify themselves as practicing Muslims; the vast majority of whom are not out to “kill or convert” non-Muslims; who do not abide by al Qaeda theology (influenced by the writings of Sayyid Qutb and Ibn Tamiyyah). Where are the “moderates”? They are out there speaking out, fighting, and being slaughtered by their radical, puritanical brethren; they are as much (and often more so) the victims of Islamist and jihadi violence than non-Muslims.

Islam has earned much of its criticism and negative reputation in the world; but if all you can do is attack Islam itself without recognizing that many of its practitioners are not your enemy- have been fighting and dying at the hands of jihadis, then you do a service to Zawahiri and bin Laden who themselves failed in creating a new super Caliphate; who failed to unite the Muslim world into perceiving itself at war with western civilization and the non-Islamic world.