Pakistani Church Desecrated By Muslim Wedding Party

Pakistani Christians

How's this for hypocrisy and a touch of irony- there's a colony of about 500 Christian homes in Lahore Pakistan. Christians, as everyone knows, are a minority religious group that have a very challenging time living in Pakistan. This colony, St. Mary's Christian Colony Gullberg III, has a church and community hall that the people of St. Mary's lovingly built with their own money. I'm not quite sure why, but a wealthy Pakistani Muslim had a relative who was about to get married, so he decided to ask the Chairman of St. Mary's Church, Salamat Masih Bhatti, if he could rent the community hall for the ceremony. Whether out of fear, or Christian charity, the members unanimously voted to allow the Muslim wedding on certain conditions: that it be used "for the wedding ceremony only", and that there be no drinking or playing of "vulgar music in the holy Christian place of prayer and worship”.

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Not only did they not follow those rules, by drinking and dancing in the Church community hall, some became so drunk they actually vomited in the hall and then proceeded to desecrate the church. When church members attempted to prevent the drunken wedding partygoers from damaging the church, they were threatened with death if the Christians happened to file a complaint with the police. In spite of those threats, they did file a complaint, but as per usual, nothing has been done, since they are, after all, only Christians.

Miraj Masih told ANS that they submitted an application for the registration of a case against the wealthy Muslim and his guests at the local police station, but to no avail.

“At last we decided to record our protest in front of a private new television namely; Express TV”, Assistant Pastor of the Church Rev. Mubarik Masih said. “Express News TV recorded our protest and slogans but after immense political pressure from the wealthy Muslim, they decided not to broadcast it.”

Bhatti added that the wealthy Muslim had pressured the Rev. Masih to withdraw his application for a case to be brought against the rich Muslim him and other guests and they (the police) had failed to provide justice and security to the local Christians.

Khalid Gill, the President of the Christian Lawyers’ Foundation (CLF) and the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA) condemned the show-down against Christians which he said were “considered soft religious and socio-economic targets in Pakistan”.

Gill said that hapless Church committee had no choice but to withdraw the application in the best interest of all the Christian residents of St Mary’s Colony and St Mary’s Church, Lahore.

Ferhan Mazher, Chairman of “Rays of Development Organization”, a Christian rights and advocacy group, said if the situation would have been vice versa the Muslims would have torched, gutted and reduced to ashes the whole Christian colony.

It's ironic those Muslims (who often hold themselves up to a higher moral authority, and yet blatantly break all religious rules) were the ones to get drunk, in spite of the fact that the Christians had asked them to respect the sanctity of their church. It's even sadder that these people have no recourse, after their religious space was desecrated. Such lack of respect. If people want to be respected they need to respect others.