Sabrina Tavernise reports in today's New York Times -- a story that begins on the front-page, and continues at great length inside -- about the rape and beating to death of a 12-year-old Pakistani girl by her employer, a rich and prominent member of the Lahore bar. The story is very long, and I read it, eager at long last to see the Times begin to cover the hideous treatment of Christians in Pakistan. The girl was Christian, and Christian girls frequently find that the only employment they can get are as domestic slaves to Muslim masters.
Here is that story.
By now, like you, I am used to a lot. I have long become inured to all the ingenious or clumsy ways the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the L.A. Times, and hundreds of other papers, and of course NPR, and the Nightly News as brought to Americans by CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox (the ranters who, when it comes to Islam, always fall noticeably silent, perhaps that silence being silent testimony to the share of Murdoch's News Corporation owned by that Saudi prince with the facial tic), avoid discussing forthrightly what Islam inculcates, or how non-Muslims are treated in countries where Muslims dominate.
But even I was surprised at how Sabrina Tavernise, and her paper, The New York Times, managed to carry this story and not once mention the fact that the girl who was beaten to death was a Christian, that her employer is Muslim, and that the Muslim lawyers of Lahore have refused to take up her case or cause, and have even terrified the handful of Christian lawyers, too, from making her case a cause célèbre.
For this is merely one case among many, of repeated miseries and murders inflicted by Muslim Pakistanis on Christians in Pakistan. If you seek examples in the modern world of the Christian heroes and martyrs to rival those of the ancient world, then surely they are to be found among the Christians in Muslim-ruled lands, and perhaps above all today in Pakistan.
Just so that the Sabrina-tavernises of this world get this straight, let's simply remind her, and her employer, The New York Times, of what it is that Pakistan's Christians must endure. A little - just a minute's worth, from recent stories put up at Jihad Watch:
1. TOBA TEK SINGH, Pakistan, January 14 (CDN) -- Two Pakistani Christians who were shot at a wedding on Dec. 26 for refusing to convert to Islam are still receiving treatment at a hospital intensive care unit, but doctors are hopeful that they will recover.
In low, barely audible voices, Imran Masih, 21, and Khushi Masih, 24, told Compass that two Muslims armed with AK-47s in Punjab Province's Chak (village) 297-JB, in Toba Tek Singh district, shot them in their chests after they refused orders to recite the Islamic creed signifying conversion.
2. GOJRA, Pakistan - No Christmas decorations brighten the tent camp sheltering Christians left homeless by the worst violence against minorities in Pakistan this year. Instead, there is a pervasive sense of fear.
The Christians have received cell phone text messages warning them to expect a "special Christmas present," they say, and are terrified of their tents being torched or their church services being bombed.
"Last year I celebrated Christmas full of joy," said Irfan Masih, cradling his young son among the canvas shelters and open ditches of the camp. But now "the fear that we may again be attacked is in our hearts.
"They are threatening us, (saying) 'We will again attack you and will not let you out of homes, we will burn you inside this time,'" he said.
3. SARGODHA, PAKISTAN (Worthy News)-- Christians on Tuesday, December 22, were mourning a Christian man who was shot dead by Muslim extremists while other believers recovered from injuries after an apparent Muslim attack on an evangelistic meeting showing the Jesus Film in Pakistan's tense Punjab province.
Patras Masih was shot because he refused to recant his faith in Christ, and died from gunshot wounds on December 3 in Karol village, his family said.
Local said Masih had received an ultimatum after being falsely accused of killing a Muslim, identified as Anees Mahammad.
He was told he would not be killed if he abandoned Christianity and "embrace Islam."
However, "My son bravely refused to recant Christianity and clung to Christ," said the man's father, Gulzar Masih, his voice trembling. After his son refused to recite the Islamic conversion creed, three Muslims known locally sprayed bullets at his chest, killing him instantly, Masih said....
4. GUJRANWALA, PAKISTAN (BosNewsLife)-- A Christian sanitation worker was struggling for his life Wednesday, December 16, in a hospital of Pakistan's Punjab province after two Christian co-workers already died because Muslim employers apparently poisoned them, police and family confirmed.
The father of the three workers, Yousaf Masih, said the incident happened Monday, December 14, in a banquet and wedding hall where his sons demanded wages owed to them.
Masih said the Muslim managers of the facility were angry that Christians dared to ask for payment.
"My sons were apparently forced to consume some kind of poisoned drink, or a drug...They were left there to die," he said, adding that their bosses also made abusive remarks about Christianity.
Imran Masih, 29, and Irfan Masih, 25, died on the spot at the 'Ferozewala Pul Banquet & Marriage Hall' while their brother 23-year-old Aakash Masih was eventually rushed to hospital by family members, Masih said. "The administration of the banquet and wedding hall did not call a hospital or take them to a hospital -instead they called us after the death of two of our loved ones."...
5. DHAREMA, PAKISTAN (BosNewsLife)-- A Christian schoolgirl in Pakistan's Punjab province was recovering Sunday, October 11, after she was allegedly "ruthlessly beaten" with a bamboo stick by a Muslim headteacher for saying she is "a Pakistani" citizen.
The bedridden Nadia Iftikhar, 11, told BosNewsLife she was seriously injured when the teacher of the local evening coaching school 'Bright Future Academy' in the town of Dharema got angry because she challenged her views on Islam.
"Our teacher was teaching us about the culture of Pakistan and Pakistani people and quoted a sentence from the text book saying 'We are Pakistani and all of us are Muslims'," the girl recalled. "At this point I interrupted and said: "Madam, I am also a Pakistani, but not a Muslim instead I am a Christian."
The teacher, identified as Humaira Hassa, "got furious and grabbed a bamboo stick and started thrashing in a barbarian way and kept saying all Pakistanis are Muslim, you are not a Pakistani but a Christian," the girl said. "Your home land is some where in Europe or America," the teacher allegedly said.
Nadia added showed scars of the wounds at her back. Classmates said the girl briefly became unconscious, but was eventually brought home. The teacher could not be reached for comment.
NO POLICE
The girl's father, Iftikhar Masih, 45 said he did not went [sic] to local police. "I am an impoverished Christian man and am busy working for a daily wage to feed my family."
Local Christians in Punjab province have also complained of police complicity in attacks against Christian believers. "However I have taken her to the doctor and and we believe that her injuries will be healed and she will be able to return to her school."
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I took exactly two minutes to locate, and copy-and-paste from this site, just a few of the many dozens of such reports put up here - many never mentioned, of course, in The New York Times. I could have found hundreds more, quite easily. But I try to cover the waterfront. All Sabrina Tavernise has to do is cover Pakistan, and so she has far more time to find out, right on the spot, about the condition of Christians (and, for that matter, Hindus and Sikhs) in Pakistan. Why doesn't she?
Why didn't she? Why didn't The New York Times, which decided to give this story such long coverage, mention the most important part of it, the fact that this is one more example of how Muslims in Pakistan have been allowed to believe, and with justice (injustice! --- what an unpretty epanorthosis)? That Muslim lawyer, former president of the Lahore Bar, who lived in his mansion, who paid the 12-year-old girl $8 a month, who abused her and raped her and then murdered her - well, he thought he could get away with it. Why shouldn't he, given all the murders of Christians, all the kidnappings and rapes and forced marriages and forced conversions of Christian girls, all the murders of Christian employees by their employers, all the frenzied mobs that attack churches, that attack Christian meetings, that demand immediate conversion or death, or become hysterical over some false charge of "blasphemy" against Islam and murder at will, or those Pakistani police who have been known to murder Christians taken in to their custody? None of this is known to Sabrina Tavernise? None of it? Or is it possible that she is simply afraid to report the truth, had to promise the Pakistani government that she would not mention the "Christian angle" - just like a reporter in Nazi Germany in 1938 saying that while he would report on the "disturbances in the streets of the major cities" he would be sure to leave out the bit about "Jews" as the targets, because "that was not important to the story. "
Oh, Sabrina Tavernise, or rather, her employer and master, the New York Times, has outdone itself today. It's gone beyond all decency, all sense, all - oh, fill up the page, printer, with whatever you think is fit to print.
I just e-mailed Hugh's article to the executive editor of the New York Times online. I won't hold my breath waiting for a response. I couldn't find a direct e-mail address for Tavarnise. It would be gratifying if the editors and executives at the Times would be blitzed with e-mails decrying their sins of omission in reportage.
Hugh, you point out that "All Sabrina Tavernise has to do is cover Pakistan, and so she has far more time to find out, right on the spot, about the condition of Christians (and, for that matter, Hindus and Sikhs) in Pakistan. Why doesn't she?"
It would appear that covering Pakistan is a large part of what she does, in fact, do, as a scan down through the articles written by her shows at the link you provided http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/sabrina_tavernise/index.html?inline=nyt-per
Every single one of these stories relates to Pakistan, so either she is extraordinarily ignorant about the country she covers, or the lack of a mention of the Christian-Muslim angle of the story was deliberate, as you say.
"I couldn't find a direct e-mail address for Tavarnise."
There is a "Send an E-Mail to Sabrina Tavernise" link on the NYT page referenced by Hugh in his story.
One would like to ask Sabrina Tavernise to study the condition of non-Muslims in Pakistan. Here are three matters she might start with in her self-education that should have taken place before she got to Pakistan, and certainly not have begun long after she started living in, and reporting on, Pakistan:
1) Hindus constituted about 15% of the population of Pakistan (then West Pakistan) at partition. Now they constitute about 1.5%. Similarly, the non-Muslim share of the population of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) has gone down from 35% to about 8% of the Bangladeshi population. At the same time, the Muslim share of India's population has not decreased at all, but gone up. Why?
2) In 2001 a well-known campaigner for human rights in Pakistan, Bishop John Joseph, shot himself as a protest against the blasphemy laws that were being used as excuses to murder, formally and informally, Christians in Pakistan. What can Sabrina Tavernise tell us about the life, and death, of Bishop John Joseph, and about those blasphemy laws.
3) Ahmadiya Muslims, Ahmadis (or Qadianis, as their Muslim detractors call them) are required on official documents in Pakistan to identify themselves as non-Muslims. Why is that done, and what have been the consequences for the Ahmadis of having to declare themselves to be non-Muslims?
A Christian in the hell of Pakistan:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/11/11/pakistan.hero/index.html
Christian janitor died saving Muslim students
By Ivan Watson, CNN
November 11, 2009
Islamabad, Paksitan (CNN) -- Life is slowly getting back to normal at the women's campus of Islamabad's International Islamic University.
Afsheen Zafar, 20, is in mourning. Three of her classmates, girls she describes as "shining stars," were killed on that terrible day.
Still, she says the carnage could have been much worse if not for the actions of a lowly janitor, who was also killed.
"If he didn't stop the suicide attacker, there could have been great, great destruction," Zafar says.
The janitor's name was Pervaiz Masih. According to eyewitness accounts, the attacker approached disguised in women's clothing. He shot the guard on duty, and then approached the cafeteria, which was packed with hundreds of female students.
Masih intercepted the bomber in the doorway, however, and the bomber self-detonated right outside the crowded hall, spraying many of his explosive vest's arsenal of ball bearings out into the parking lot instead of into the cafeteria.
"The sweeper who was cleaning up here saw someone outside and went towards him," said Nasreen Siddique, a cafeteria worker who was wounded in the head, leg and arm by the blast. "[Masih] told him that he could not come inside because there were girls inside. And then they started arguing. And then we heard a loud blast and all the glass broke."
"Between 300 to 400 girls were sitting in there," said Professor Fateh Muhammad Malik, the rector of the university. "[Pervez Masih] rose above the barriers of caste, creed and sectarian terrorism. Despite being a Christian, he sacrificed his life to save the Muslim girls."
Masih was a member of Pakistan's Christian minority, traditionally one of the poorest communities in the country.
When the attacker struck, Masih had been on the job for less than a week, earning barely $60 a month.
One would think that the Christian churches would all be up in arms over the mistreatment of Christians in Pakistan and elsewhere in dar-el-Islam, but many of them, especially the liberal branches, seem to just want to Israel-bash. Isn't the EU mainly Christian? Same problem. Even Pat Buchanan, for all his criticism of Islam, focuses more on Israel.
I think Christian anti-Semitism and its handmaid, anti-Zionism, is a useful cover for Islamic abuses of Christians.
Remember what 19th century British historian Edward Augustus Freeman wrote: "Islam is at war with every other creed on earth."
Jewdog,
I notice the same about most Christians in Western countries. Mind you, there were and are forever reports of oppression of Christians, in the past often in Communist Countries, now still occasionally in China, and always in Islamic countries. But Christians relied on human rights organisations and government-diplomacy to help their fellow-Christians. This attitude of Christians still goes on.
But at the same time, trying to be nice and fair to the still novel Islamic minorities in Western countries, they do not want to take it up with them, not even with other Westerners who make a point of oppressive behavior by Muslims on Christians.
The Western Christians don't look internationally, but only nationally. And thus want to spare Muslims, living in the West, awkward questions like: Where lies your loyalty really? Are you with us in a fair democratic way or secretly or even openly with Supremacist Muslims?
They focus their criticism often, not only on Israel as you say, but also on Geert Wilders and his party and followers, as if there is a bigger extreme-right danger from them than there is from Islam-Supremacists???!!!
For now we can only keep telling our message when possible and accept this for us incomprehensible position of these churches.
OT. From the above story - Christian janitor died saving Muslim students:
"He is a national hero because he saved the life of many girls," said Shahbaz Bhatti, minister of minorities in the Pakistani government...But the grave of this national hero is a sorry sight. It is located in the poorer, garbage-strewn Christian half of a neighborhood cemetery, less then three feet from a muddy road...Masih's mother and widow visit every day. One of his sisters crosses herself, then stoops down to pick up an empty pack of cigarettes someone threw onto the little mound of earth...The family had to borrow money to pay for Masih's funeral and they are now behind on paying the rent.
So much for "on behalf of a grateful nation". I suppose if he had flown a plane into a kāfir building there would be posters, tv documentaries and music videos about him.
And notice that there is no mention that ANY of the girl's families whose lives he undoubtedly saved offering help or even thanks. Only shock and surprise by the University's head that a Christian would care one wit about muslim lives:
"Between 300 to 400 girls were sitting in there," said Professor Fateh Muhammad Malik, the rector of the university. "[Pervez Masih] rose above the barriers of caste, creed and sectarian terrorism. Despite being a Christian, he sacrificed his life to save the Muslim girls."
His surprise simply implies the muslim view - that he would have not lifted a finger had the roles been reversed.
These muslims did not deserve this man but God has demonstrated his love through his servant. Maybe, just maybe, it might get a few of these muslimas to think.
Pervez Masih died in the way Christ Himself died, for thankless unworthy sinners.
Thanks - I didn't see the link, somehow, although I should have. Nonetheless, I'm not sorry I e-mailed an editor instead of Tavernise herself, going over her head, so to speak. Maybe she'll receive some constructive criticism. Then again, probably not.
ISLAM will not be defeated by our cowardly western governments. It will be defeated by the people. We must rise up and force the issue.