ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on religiously inspired paramilitary violence against Christians in the Punjab province of Pakistan. For over four decades now, an increasing number of professional groups and religious communities have experienced intimidation and a rising death toll from targeted killings, mob attacks, and bombings. The roots of this phenomenon date back to the 1960s when Islamist groups lent their ideological vigour and motivated cadres to the Pakistani military against leftist student groups on college campuses. The purview of violence soon expanded to include secessionist groups in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and other populist and leftist forces within the country and across the border in Afghanistan. The alliance thrived in subsequent decades, bolstered by regional and international factors. Since the 1980s, motivated cadres have given way to well-funded militant organizations, and the list of targets has become longer to include religious minorities, journalists, prominent politicians, intellectuals, celebrities, and, most recently, state personnel. The rising tide of paramilitary violence has been accompanied and aided by the incorporation of Islamic provisions in the constitutional and legal structure and an infusion of Islamic symbols and discourse in the academic curricula and mainstream media. Most recently, there has been a trend of mob attacks by Muslim groups against Christian communities typically following allegations of blasphemy or dishonouring some tenets or individuals associated with Islamic faith and history. The state’s response ranges from open encouragement to benign neglect. Situating our discussion within this context, we analyse factors that set anti-Christian attacks apart from other types of paramilitary Islamist violence. While state institutions have been unable or unwilling to protect all parts of the citizenry, they have played the most passive, even partisan, role in preventing anti-Christian violence. We relate these differences to the historical, demographic, and socio-economic profile of Pakistani Christians and their particular vulnerabilities. We argue that the embrace of paramilitary violence as a policy tool, a permissive legal system, and an Islamized bureaucratic culture and media provides fertile grounds for frequent vigilante attacks in the name of religious honour that spread fear and exacerbate class inequality by dispossessing already-marginalized communities.
