Goodbye, Good Man: Shabaz Bhatti

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In July 2002, I received an email from my friend Shahbaz Bhatti, the president of the Christian Liberation Front in Pakistan. He had just convened a meeting of all of Pakistan’s oppressed minorities in order to work more successfully for their human rights and religious freedom. The Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Ahmedis, Baha’is, and others from all the provinces of Pakistan formed the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA) and elected Bhatti as the chairman. “Dear Sister Faith,” he addressed me in his usual style as a fellow Christian, “Pakistan’s opinion makers were noting that the religious minorities of Pakistan had made history by forming an alliance for the first time in Pakistan’s history, which would empower them ‘to resolve contentious issues which have been confronting them for decades.’” He was upbeat and hopeful when I replied to his email to congratulate him. I wish I had sent him more emails over the years.

Nine years later, Wednesday morning, March 2, 2011, I received word of my friend’s brutal slaying by jihadist proponents of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. He was 42. Bhatti, a Catholic who became Pakistan’s Minister for Minorities in 2008, was the only Christian government minister in the country. Amid numerous death threats, he had been working for years to overturn the draconian blasphemy laws in the country’s Criminal Code. The cowardly gunmen ambushed him just outside his mother’s home in Islamabad and riddled his car with bullets, according to reports. Reports also indicate that the gunmen appeared to know Bhatti’s movements and to know that he was without security that morning. He had not been given a bullet-proof vehicle by the government, although he requested one.

Bhatti had battled tirelessly defending the rights of the minority peoples of Pakistan. He was a voice for the marginalized, such as the 4% of Pakistan’s population that are Christians, who are deprived of education, and whose only jobs are sweeping the dung off the streets, cleaning sewers, living in a brickyard building bricks, or other such work. He was an advocate for Pakistani Christian parents whose daughters have been abducted, raped, and forced to marry their Muslim rapists, and for those children’s Muslim employees have decided it is easier to murder them than to pay them.

But in his battle to reform his country’s blasphemy laws, Bhatti was not only an advocate for all of Pakistan’s non-Muslim ethnic groups, but for Muslim victims of the laws as well. In fact, the blasphemy laws have been used as a weapon against Muslims more frequently than against Christians and other minorities. Their application has been capricious, vindictive, and irrational. They are used as a weapon to settle personal arguments and business and land disputes. The laws, a component of the Shariah, make any perceived insult of Mohammed, the Koran, or Islam itself, a crime punishable by death. The accusation against an enemy is enough. Then the burden of proof is on them to defend themselves, amid the chaos of a half-crazed mob already screaming for their blood.

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  • waterwillows

    It is a stark contrast what Islam will produce against what the Judeo/Christian culture will produce.
    On one hand we have the thoughtless, barbaric savage with more murderous intentions than carter's liver pills.
    On the other hand we have a man who will speak up and fight for justice. A man of compassion and integrity. A man with too much grace and guts for the ignorant hoards around him.
    May the Lord bless him and keep him. May His Light shine down on him. May he rest in peace.

    • larry B.

      How true, This is the true Jihad, the struggle for peace and justice. The damned terrorists and ignorant islamists cannot bear a real man of God amongst them.
      They can only destroy what is good and enlightening. May he rest in peace, and his death is not in vain, as anger swells worldwide against the EVIL RELIGION of ISLAM

  • http://www.faithfreedom.org K Baloch

    Islam is blood thirsty beast..Shame on those who make false claims that it is a religion promoting peace.Blood of innocent Christians like Shahbaz Bhatti would haunt these wild beast one day.
    It sad to see that western world is still in deep sleep after all these heavy explosions.Muslim immigrates should be sent back to their respective countries and there should be ban on new commers to the west.Let them kill and be killed in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

  • fran

    THESE PEOPLE SHOULD BE SENT BACK TO WHERE THEY CAME FROM THIS IS ALL HAPPENING BECAUSE THEY HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO DO THIS.
    THIS GREAT COUNTRY OF OURS HAS ALLOWED THIS BECAUSE WE ARE TOO NICE AND NAIVE, IF YOU KNOW WHICH WE DO KNOW HOW MUCH WORSE ITS GOING TO GET, THEN OUR COUNTRY OWES IT TO US TO PREVENT IT FROM HAPPENING BY GETTING RID OF THE PROBLEMS,
    SEND ALL BACK, PACK UP THE PLANES AND AWAY THEY GO.
    OUR COUNTRIES STUPIDITY IS KILLING US WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?

  • fran

    I guess protecting a sick pedophile wins this time

    SICK PEOPLE

  • dawning

    They are defending their god allah aka. satan. The ultimate battle between good and evil is shaping up. There will be martyrs. Mr Bhatti was a truly good man. The evil creatures who murdered him are truly bad people who thought they were doing their god a favor. Thinking you are doing your god a favor is very powerful motivation. One will give ones life to it. It would be so good if some of them could actually have an opportunity to hear the truth and learn about the TRUE God

  • jason

    thank you for posting this article. it is amazing to me that the leftists in America actually think they are 'for the little guy' when they defend Islam or deny Islam's brutality, this story shows that they are not, they are in cahoots with religious fascism, and yet they parade around as if they are preserving some precious gem for humanity.

    • Faith

      Thanks, Jason. And not just the typical leftists. I am smarting quite a bit this morning for being attacked as an Islamophobe and accused of hate for defending the Peter King hearings as needed and sensible. This by "evangelical" Christians.

  • Supreme_Galooty

    Yes indeedy, those jolly Musselmen are at it again. It is a disgusting display of savagery, ignorance, evil. That which marshalls the forces of death against the forces of life is evil, and make no mistake, from the very beginning Islam – founded in pederasty – has marshalled the forces of death against the forces of life. It is a profoundly sinister band of hippocrites.