Express Tribune: By Faheem Younus: Billa was his nick name. An uneducated Christian boy, who used to clean sewer lines, remove garbage, and on a good day, play cricket with us on the streets of Lahore. I fondly remember how he could hit the ball out of the park and make the team proud. But my life in Pakistan was rife with contradictions. At jumma prayers, the team heard Islamic stories of equal treatment of non-Muslims and a few hours later, despite taking a bath, Billa would dare not shake hands with us, let alone eat on the same dinner table. Thanks to cricket though, we remained a team. Not anymore. Three decades and over 1000 blasphemy cases later leveled at both the Muslims and non-Muslims of this country, the uneducated poor Christians are under constant religious persecution in Pakistan. On March 9, a mob of over 3,000 people vandalised Joseph Colony – a dilapidated Christian neighbourhood in my birthplace of Lahore, Pakistan – when a Christian man was accused of blaspheming Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). More than 150 houses, including two small churches, were ransacked and set ablaze.
Categories: Ahmadis And Pakistan, Anti Islam act by Muslims, Anti-Islam Attitude, Asia