The Burden of Blasphemy: Bishop John Joseph’s Martyrdom and the Endless Persecution of Pakistani Christians (Part 3)

Part 1
Part 2

Bishop John Joseph, while kissing Manzoor’s feet, might have visualized the actions of the Muslims in an alleged blasphemy situation. As soon as a person is charged, right, wrong, or by way of rumor, he would be attacked, assaulted, hit, beaten, kicked, stabbed, burnt, stoned, shot, and sometimes killed by a Muslim mob before police reached for rescue, but the police have not been able to save innocent people from these Muslims to this day. The mob, after manhandling, would drag him to police only if luck favored him.

In case the victim is Christian, the mob would attack, ransack, and plunder his house and even his locality, and take away the belongings as booty. They would lodge a false report with the police based on a fabricated story against the accused and would substantiate it with false witnesses under false oath. They would tempt, threaten, and coerce the victim to abandon his faith and adopt theirs. They would flatter, bribe, blackmail, and threaten concerned police officers to influence the investigations in their favor. They would warn the lawyer community not to take the case of the accused. They would harass and even attack the lawyer who risked pleading the case of the accused. They would exert nerve-racking pressure on the judge responsible for proceedings of the case, through social influence, threats, and blackmail, for award of sentence of their choice. They would gather on every hearing of the case in the court of justice in jihadi group formation and hold protest meetings inside the court compound or nearby, demanding the immediate death penalty for the accused. They would attack the accused, in police custody, whenever possible. They would manage to torture the accused in prison. They would threaten, attack, and even kill the judge who acquitted the innocent accused. They would cry, faint, and riot if the innocent accused was acquitted. They would launch a hunt for the acquitted person, to gun him down whenever and wherever possible. They would use every possible technique, including flattery, bribery, threats, harassment, blackmail, agitation, rioting, armed attacks, killing, and so on in the name of Muhammad and Islam, to see their victim dead in any way. They would prove at every step that in their words, they have a bank full of all moral, human, social, and legal values and virtues on earth, but in practice, they exhibit sheer bankruptcy regarding all of them.

The bishop, when kissing Manzoor’s feet, might have thought of the historic betrayal of transforming Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s modern democratic Pakistan into an orthodox Islamic state of medievalist chauvinists with ulterior motives, where all but jihadis have been held hostage to Islamic bigotry. He might have recalled the basic shift of the Constitution, Civil Procedure Code, and Penal Code of Pakistan from the principles of the United Nations Charter, Human Rights Declaration, Covenants, and Conventions to the principles of Islamic law.

The bishop saw two stark realities: one, the promise of equal rights for all; the other, a legacy of religious segregation, discrimination, and violence fueled by General Zia’s regime and his political heirs. He grieved the persecution of non-Muslims and enlightened Muslims, the deceitful claims of equality by rulers, and the systematic relegation of minorities to second-class status. Yet he also took courage in the struggle of human rights bodies, NGOs, and international allies who stood as a shield for the powerless. He found pride in the steadfast role of Christians in Pakistan’s progress, but sorrow in their small numbers, their divisions, and their vulnerability — like sheep without a shepherd.

He might have thought of finding some way to use their powerlessness as a weapon against the tyranny of the powerful Muslims. He might have identified the specific Messianic mission and received the Messianic Spirit referred to in the Holy Scripture, saying:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” (Luke 4:18-19 and Isaiah 61:1-2)

And beyond all, the blissful kiss of Bishop John Joseph to Manzoor’s feet was a prophetic kiss, foretelling his execution of self-offering after forty-nine months in protest against the blasphemy laws for which Manzoor Masih was gunned down.

The bishop, while kissing the feet of Manzoor Masih, might have dreamed of seeing his motherland, Pakistan, as a beautiful modern democratic state with equal status, equal opportunities, equal religious and civil rights, equal responsibilities, and equal respect and regard for all communities and individuals. A dream of a motherland free of all segregation, discrimination, intolerance, and exploitation, whether religious, sectarian, ethnic, linguistic, or any other.

With his kiss of commitment, the Bishop must have responded to his inner call under the circumstances for which he was commissioned.