Pakistan has 200 million inhabitants, 3 of which they are Christians. In other words, there are more Christians in Pakistan than in many European countries, but the figure remains unnoticed.
The country is spoken above all with regard to the provinces of the North West and to the area of Peshawar, cradle of the Taliban insurgency, poised between collusion and contrast to the central power of Islamabad.
The Taliban are always talked about TTP, reunified by the 2015 with Jamat Ul Ahrar, a fundamentalist Sunni cartel that in spite of Resolute Support, is increasingly strong in the regions of eastern Afghanistan. Even in the mix of alliances and rivalries between clans, the ethnicity axis Pashtuns between the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban at the turn of the Durand line (3000 km of border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, actually nothing more than a stroke of the pen ...) has a great geopolitical importance: a return of the Taliban to Kabul would guarantee a strategic reservoir in Islamabad, in a regional anti Indian perspective. Pakistan officially committed against international terrorism, is actually more interested in influencing Kabul and keeping the whole area in disarray. THE'expertise Pakistani intelligence (ISI) in this area it is well known: all the dirty jobs in Kashmir have logistic roots right in the lawless lands between Jalalabad and Peshawar.
Nevertheless, throughout May 2016, the biggest news from Pakistan did not come from the western regions but from Lahore, a Punjab megalopolis near the Indian border. The protagonist of the Easter massacre at the Gulshan-i-Iqbal playground was the branch of TTP operating right in Punjab and already author of other feats in the past, such as blowing up local churches by killing dozens of people.
Islamic hatred in Punjab traditionally oriented against symbols of neighboring India, has increasingly begun to target the Christian community, conspicuous in absolute numbers but relatively small. In Lahore the dead were around 70 and the confessional matrix was reiterated in the claim.
Between torpor, laziness and front convictions, the West has turned away. The official statements have again pushed a lot on the word "minorities" and little on the term "Christian".
Even across the border, in India, the trend is not very different. In 2015, more than 200 cases of violence against Christian minorities were recorded in Uttar Pradesh alone. The matrix this time is not Islamic but Hindu, with specific reference to the nationalist party Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
The Indian institutions, so swift to take on the alleged lese (the case of the Marò if it were not a shame would even be comical ...), appear much less diligent when it comes to defending the rights of those who have a negligible political weight. In other words: "if intervening on behalf of Christians undermines the internal balance of Greater India, then it is better to turn a blind eye, or rather two ... "
In the second Islamic reservoir of the Indian subcontinent, Bangladesh, things are even worse if possible. For years now Asia News reports a real hunt for the Christian carried out by Muslim extremist circles in the total inertia of the local authorities. In Kurigram the last slaughter for conversion to Christianity took place on March 22 in the silence of the media. Collective rape and physical violence are the order of the day.
Where does politics start and religion end?
The question makes sense when the ultimate goal is the same: to empty a culture of its contents to impose others.
To say that the now ex-West Christian is complicit is a euphemism. In addition to the alarms issued by the Holy See on whose positions the media filter based on content, which is very little. It is very difficult to even have news of a phenomenon that appears to be objective and indisputable: around the world today, religious hatred focuses mainly on Christians.
It smells like smoke from burning churches and the general apathy doesn't seem too casual. Being a Christian in times of relativism becomes a fault for which it is right to pay. A choice that leads to "you asked for it" and that even draws on historical nemesis: "Christians in the past have also persecuted".
Some daring forays of secularism to the bitter end sometimes even dust off Giordano Bruno and Galileo in order to minimize the violence and abuses against the Christians of our times.
The idea on which to reflect is that Christianophobia in the world is profoundly linked to the cultural references now reigning in Europe and America. If being a Christian in many countries has become a crime, it is partly due to the fact that nations of Christian culture and tradition do not react, on the contrary, sometimes they seem almost embarrassed by the phenomenon. Therefore, to affirm that the problem is domestic is not a gamble and the reasons are social, sometimes even theological.
Ethical polycentrism has greatly affected the affirmation of questionable principles and beliefs, indirectly giving breath to more violent and radical cultures. It is enough to cite two extremely dangerous commonplaces for the survival of Christian culture:
- reason is contrary to faith;
- those who are Christians must be in private, respecting the elusive "others".
The first creates a rift between the enlightened world and the Christian world, a division that is not present in non-Western cultures.
With the latter the faith is isolated from the institutions, also favoring geopolitical choices in contrast with its cultural heritage. As an example, just think that we Westerners ignore the principle of reciprocity for the respect of religious minorities with all countries with a non-Christian majority. We have said of Pakistan, but even among Arab nations with which we make lucrative business we distinguish not a few notable examples of obscurantism: Saudi Arabia is valid for everyone.
Faced with crimes of apostasy present in the criminal codes of many Muslim countries, Italian taxpayers continue to finance Islamic centers around Italy without even knowing it.
Who needs this? Will the god of money keep putting patches forever?
It is difficult to think that all this is a good signal even in a geopolitical key. The weight of a civilization in the world is found above all by its cultural presence of which the religious component is an inevitable trait.
The impotence of the West may also pass by this.
(photo: web /Pak Fauj)
