: Murdering Pakistani Worshippers: It’s Not Just For Christians Anymore

Much has been made of the many murders of Christians in Pakistan over the last year, as if to show that those who committed these crimes somehow represented a Muslim hatred of non-Muslims in their midst. Well, the likely culprits in those attacks – the shadowy Sipah-e-Sahaba militant group that has been banned by the government – have shown themselves to be equal opportunity murderers with the gunning down of ten Shi’a Muslims while they were saying their evening prayers (including a chief in the Pakistan Air Force). As the death toll mounts, this latest attack – near the one year anniversary of the slaying of journalist Daniel Pearl – promises to be the worst sectarian massacre in over a year. The Pakistani Christian community, comparatively, has had it easy – nearly 2,000 Shi’as (and nearly 1,000 Sunnis) have been killed over the last ten years by the same type of drive-by machine gun attacks that were seen yesterday in Karachi. Reasons for the increased sectarian violence are complex, including Taliban remnants looking for payback, incitement of violence towards non-Muslims (the definition varies) by extremist groups, and Pakistan’s pervasive “Kalashnikov culture” brought about by the influx of guns from Afghanistan after the Russians were driven out. Wait a second – wasn’t it America that bought those guns in the first place?

Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.