Forman is Pakistan’s leading Christian educational institution, now celebrating its 150th anniversary. Only 600 of its 6,000 students are Christian; what’s remarkable is how fully integrated into campus life they are. Like many non-Christian Pakistanis, I owed my education to Christian teachers, both at Forman and at my previous school, [...]
admin
Darul Iman Jamia Masjid Qurtuba’s story is as dramatic as the sectarian history of Pakistan. The newly-built mosque in Islamabad’s Margalla foothills is calling upon its followers to stop discriminating along sectarian lines and to start praying together – in whichever way they like – under the same roof. Zahid Iqbal is a local businessman [...]
admin
About 20 men dressed as Pakistani soldiers boarded a bus bound for a Muslim festival outside this mountain town and checked the identification cards of the passengers. They singled out 19 Shi’ites, drew weapons and slaughtered them, most with a bullet to the head. The shooters weren’t soldiers. They were a hit squad linked to the [...]
admin
A few days ago, there were heart-rending scenes in Kohistan district of Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. Gunmen stopped a convoy of buses, ordered selected passengers to get off and then killed 18 of them in a grisly attack. The victims were from the minority Shia community. Days earlier, there was another sectarian attack, in Kurram [...]
admin
Nestled among the valleys of Pakistan’s mountainous northwest, a tiny religious community that claims descent from Alexander the Great’s army is under increasing pressure from radicals bent on converting them to Islam. The Kalash, who number just about 3,500 in Pakistan’s population of 180 million, are spread over three valleys along [...]
admin