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Pray for physical, spiritual and emotional healing for two Pakistani Christian brothers kidnapped by radical Muslims in Punjab province and tortured into “converting” to Islam. Azam Masih, 39, a tailor, and his brother Nadeem Masih, 41, were repeatedly hit with iron bars and threatened with death by their two captors if they did not comply. Wounded and weak, the brothers were forced into reciting the shahada Islamic creed, which is considered by Muslims to constitute conversion to Islam. Azam and Nadeem were released but their captors threatened to kill the brothers and their families if they reported their ordeal, which took place on 22 January 2024. The brothers, who received hospital treatment for their many injuries, later filed a complaint with police. Police have arrested two Muslim men, Naseem Shah and Sunny Shah, and charged them with five offences, including kidnap, theft with the intention to cause injury or death, and religious hatred. Both men have criminal records and have been involved in previous incidents of inciting hatred against Christians. The abduction in Sialkot District has shocked and caused fear among the area’s minority Christian community. Azam and Nadeem are now in hiding with their families. Some Muslims believe that the mere recitation of shahada (or kalma in Urdu) is sufficient to convert a non-Muslim to Islam, even if there is no belief and no matter what the circumstances that surround the “conversion”. Once a person becomes a Muslim, he or she is considered an apostate if they return to their original religion. According to Islamic law, apostasy is punishable by death, imprisonment or confiscation of property, although in modern times this is rarely practised at state level. However, zealous Muslims may sincerely believe they are doing the right thing by attacking or killing apostates. Attempts to forcibly convert Christian men or boys to Islam are rare in Pakistan. However, Christian and Hindu girls and young women are frequently abducted and forced to “convert” to Islam before being coerced into marrying a Muslim. These “conversions” are often committed under a threat of violence to the victims and their families, but the authorities rarely intervene.

Shazia Imran, a 40-year-old Christian widow, was killed by four men in murky circumstances because she did not want to convert to Islam and marry a Muslim man, Mani Gujjar. For activist Nadia Stephen, minority women and girls should not be subjected to abduction, rape, and murder simply because they refuse to abandon their religion. Lahore (AsiaNews) – Shazia Imran, a Christian woman, was kidnapped, raped and killed by four Muslim men because she refused to convert to Islam and marry a man who had set his eyes on her. Mani Gujjar is the main suspect in the death of the 40-year-old Christian widow. After failing to get her to do what he wanted, he and others gang-raped her and, after killing her, tried to destroy her body with acid. Shazia worked at a daycare centre at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) where she first met the man who now stands accused of her death. On 6 June, when she did not return from work, her family searched for the mother of three – two boys, Salman (16) and Abrar (6), and one daughter, Aliza (7) – without success. The next day, they went to the police to file a report, concerned because Shazia and her family were convinced that her husband was beaten to death 18 months earlier, not by “thugs”, as the police asserted, but by the same people who killed Shazia. Physical attacks and rape have been used countless times as coercive methods of conversion, above all, against women from religious minorities in Pakistan. Shazia’s case, her rape and murder for refusing to convert, have sparked a new wave of fear but also anger and protests among the country’s Catholic minority. Her relatives say that she had told her sister-in-law about Mani Gujjar’s harassment and attempts to get her to convert and marry him. So far police have arrested only one of the four suspects, Mani Gujjar himself; his brother and two cousins, who allegedly participated in the crime, are still at large. Joseph Jansen, president of Voice of Justice, said he was concerned about the incident, and urged the authorities to take strong action against the perpetrators. For Jansen, whose NGO provides legal counsel through Pakistan’s first digital legal portal, the persecution of religious minorities needs to be curbed as soon as possible. By the same token, the authorities must adopt stricter measures to ensure the safety and security of society’s marginalised groups. In his view, it is very disturbing but alarmingly common that Christian girls and women are subjected to pressure, harassment, and violence when they refuse to convert to Islam. Women’s rights activist Nadia Stephen agrees; for her, minority women and girls who face such pressures are very vulnerable. They should not be subjected to abduction, rape, and murder simply because they refuse to abandon their religion.

LAHORE, Pakistan — A Catholic father of four children was gunned down by Muslim neighbors last week after he objected to their harassment of Christians in the area, his family said. Marshall Masih of the Patiala House area in Lahore was the sole breadwinner for his elderly parents, wife and four children — the oldest 10, the youngest 18 months old. He was 29. His sister Goshi Yaqoob, 33, said his family was asleep at 4:25 a.m. last Wednesday when four armed Muslims led by Muhammad Shani and Azam Ali entered their house from the rooftop after cutting the iron grill. “The assailants broke the door of my brother’s bedroom on the first floor of the house and held him and his family hostage on gunpoint,” Yaqoob told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “They then opened indiscriminate fire on him, riddling his body with 16 bullets in the presence of his wife and minor children.” Yaqoob was at her parents’ house at that time. The sound of gunfire and the screams of her sister-in-law and children woke her up, and she rushed to their house, where she saw four men heading to the roof. She went to her brother’s bedroom. “I was horrified to see his blood-soaked body lying on the floor while his wife and children were huddled in a corner crying frantically,” she said, breaking down in tears. Neighbors awakened by the screams helped the family take the critically injured Masih to the hospital, where he died from bleeding and the wounds to his organs, she said. Masih, known as Bunty, had filed a police complaint against Shani two and a half months ago after repeated, unsuccessful attempts to dissuade him and his cohorts from regular aerial firing in the area and harassing Christian women, she said. “Though the police arrested Shani and recovered illegal weapons from his possession, he was freed after a day without any case,” Yaqoob said. “Instead, the police pressured my brother to stop pursuing the matter. The Muslims were offended that a Christian had taken a stand against their criminal activities, and by killing him in cold blood, they have shown that our lives do not matter.” Christians held a protest outside the office of the Punjab province chief minister the same day demanding swift justice. “But our pleas have fallen on deaf ears, and so far none of the accused murderers have been arrested,” she said. Her father, a retired sanitation worker, is 75 and recently underwent heart surgery, and the family is concerned about the future of Masih’s children and young widow. “My brother was the sole provider for the family, but with his untimely death, we are clueless as to how his young widow and four children will survive now,” she said. “Our entire world has crumbled after this incident.” She appealed to the provincial government and to Christians for support. “We are in dire need of help. My father’s meager pension cannot support the family, especially the education and wellbeing of the children, as well as the legal battle to bring the killers to justice,” she said. “I appeal to the government to give education scholarships to the children and urge my fellow Christians to help us in whatever way possible so that we can get justice from the courts.” Masih ran a small grocery store out of his house and had a good reputation among the 20 Christian families living in the area for more than three decades, his sister said. “We are three sisters, and Masih was our only brother, the youngest of the four siblings,” she said. “He was a God-fearing Catholic who worked very hard to provide a livelihood for our parents, both of whom are heart patients, and his family.” Rise in violence There has been an increase in violent crimes against Christians in Pakistan since attacks on multiple churches and homes of Christians in Jaranwala on Aug. 16, when two brothers were falsely accused of blasphemy. Some of the attacks have also been attributed to the Israel-Palestine conflict following the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, as Christians are seen as being sympathetic towards Jews. On Nov. 9, 20-year-old Christian Farhan Ul Qamar was allegedly shot dead by a Muslim Muhammad Zubair in his house in Talwandi Inayat Khan village, Pasrur tehsil of Sialkot District, Punjab province, in the presence of his parents. Qamar’s father said Zubair showed hatred for Christians and Jews, mistakenly referring to the family as Jews as he ranted at them before allegedly killing the Christian. A 14-year-old Christian boy was gunned down by Muslims in the Mandiala Warraich area of Gujranwala District, Punjab province, on Feb. 5, in an attack purportedly motivated by the Jaranwala incident. The victim, Sunil Masih, was standing in the market with some family members when the assailants arrived on motorcycles. They allegedly shouted that no Christian in the area should be left alive and opened fire, killing Masih on the spot while others barely managed to save their lives. Pakistan ranked seventh on Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List of the most difficult places to be a Christian, as it was the previous year.

Ehsan Shan, though not party to the desecration, was accused of reposting the defaced pages of the Koran on his TikTok account Local residents look a spot where a Muslim mob lynched and burned a man over allegations that he had desecrated Islam’s holy book, in Madyan, a town in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Friday, June 21, 2024. A Muslim mob in northwestern Pakistan broke into a police station, snatched a man who was held there and then lynched him over allegations that he had desecrated Islam’s holy book, the Quran. | Photo Credit: AP A court in Pakistan sentenced a Christian man to death for sharing what it said was hateful content against Muslims on social media after one of the worst mob attacks on Christians in the eastern Punjab province last year, his lawyer said on July 1, adding he will appeal the verdict. In August 2023, groups of Muslim men burned dozens of homes and churches in the city of Jaranwala after some residents claimed they saw two Christian men tearing out pages from Islam’s holy book, the Koran, throwing them on the ground and writing insulting remarks on other pages, authorities said. The two men were later arrested.No casualties were reported at the time as terrified Christians fled their homes to safer areas. Though the police arrested more than 100 suspects following the attacks, it remained unclear if any were convicted. Ehsan Shan, though not party to the desecration, was accused of reposting the defaced pages of the Koran on his TikTok account, his lawyer Khurram Shahzad told The Associated Press on July 1. He also said he would appeal against the death sentence issued on June 29 by a court in the city of Sahiwal in Punjab province Amir Farooq, a police officer who arrested Mr. Shan, said the man shared “the hateful content at a sensitive time when authorities were already struggling to contain the violence.” Naveed Kashif, a local priest at a church in Sahiwal, said while he didn’t excuse what Mr. Shan posted, he wondered “why the court ordered such an extreme verdict when those linked to the attacks are yet to be punished.” Blasphemy accusations are common in Pakistan. Under the country’s blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Islam or Islamic religious figures can be sentenced to death. While authorities have yet to carry out a death sentence for blasphemy, often just the accusation can cause riots and incite mobs to violence, lynching and killings. Earlier this month, 72-year-old Nazir Masih died after he was attacked by an angry mob in May following accusations of blasphemy.

Lazer Nazir Masih is His Name At 4:04AM on Saturday morning May 25th I woke up to the most heart wrenching and disturbing video I had ever seen. The shameless beating and torture of Lazer Nazir Masih.  Hi, my name is Daniel, and I serve at Global Catalytic Ministries as a storyteller. My job is to take the untold stories from the underground persecuted church and share them with the world through creative media. From the four corners of the globe and in the darkest of places, in the shadows there is unimaginable light sweeping across these hidden places. That is the light of the Gospel. That is Christ Himself, the Light of the World, walking the dark streets of cities like Mecca, illuminating His love to the needy and broken. (There are hundreds of stories of the ‘Man in White’ appearing in dreams to Muslims across the Middle East.) It is a remarkable opportunity that I do not take lightly.   What happened to Lazer Nazir Masih?  I am forever marked by the events that took place in Pakistan on May 25th. That morning, footage started pouring in from our teams in the region. Every few seconds the alert chime would sound off. Dozens of videos and a handful of graphic images capturing the atrocities. What happened to Lazer Nazir Masih? What happened in Pakistan? What happened in the Christian community in Punjab? What follows is a direct report from one of our team members on the ground.  The Report from Punjab “Hello, my beloved brothers and sisters in Christ. Today I come to you with a heavy heart and a message that demands our attention and our collective voice. Another tragic and heart wrenching incident of violence against our Christian community in Punjab.A charged mob attacked and vandalized properties in Sargodha Masjid’s colony. An elderly man in his 80s was dragged through the streets, brutally beaten and at one point thrown into a fire. His injuries were so severe that he submitted to them either on the spot or shortly after being rushed to the hospital. This is not an isolated incident. As Christians in Pakistan, we have faced systematic discrimination and violence for years. Our community has been marginalized, our voice is silenced, and our rights trampled upon. We are often targets of false accusation and brutal attacks simply for practicing our faith and striving for a better life.Today, I stand before you, not just with righteous anger, but with a call for justice and compassion. The death of this elderly man. The suffering of his family and the destruction of their house and livelihood must not be in vain. As Christians, we are called to stand up for the oppressed, to be a voice for voiceless, and to be embody the love and justice of Christ to the international community, especially our brothers and sisters in the rest of the world. We need your support. We need your prayers, your voice, and your advocacy.  Stand with us against these injustices, raise your awareness, speak out against these acts of violence, and urge your governments to take action to protect minority communities in Pakistan.  Let us not be disheartened. Let us be strengthened by our faith and united in our resolve. Together, we can bring out change and ensure that our Christian communities in Pakistan can live with dignity, peace, and security. Thank you and May God bless you all.”