Hundreds of Muslim men have attacked a Christian community in eastern Pakistan, vandalising several churches and a cemetery and setting scores of houses on fire, after accusing its members of desecrating a copy of the Qur’an.
Hundreds of people armed with sticks and rocks stormed a predominantly Christian area in Faisalabad on Wednesday. Images on social media showed smoke rising from church buildings and people setting fire to furniture.
The attack was triggered by a group of religious zealots accusing a local Christian family of desecrating the Qur’an, according to a rescue official at the scene.
“Photos and video clips of burnt pages of the Qur’an were shared among the locals, which created an uproar,” Rana Imran Jamil, a spokesperson for the city’s 1122 rescue service, told AFP. He said four churches had been set on fire and there were no reports of injuries.
A Christian leader, Akmal Bhatti, told Reuters that the crowd had torched at least five churches and looted valuables from houses that had been abandoned by their owners after clerics made announcements in mosques inciting the mob.
Videos posted on social media, showed local Muslim leaders using mosque loudspeakers to urge their followers to demonstrate. “Christians have desecrated the Holy Qur’an. All the clerics, all the Muslims should unite and gather in front of the mosque. Better to die if you don’t care about Islam,” one cleric is heard saying in a video.
“There is a standoff between the police and the crowds. The crowds are not backing down. Police and Rangers have been deployed to control the situation,” Ahad Noor, a district government official, told AFP, referring to a paramilitary force.
The Right Rev Azad Marshall, a bishop in the neighbouring city of Lahore, said the Christian community was “deeply pained and distressed”.
“We cry out for justice and action from law enforcement and those who dispense justice and the safety of all citizens to intervene immediately and assure us that our lives are valuable in our own homeland,” he posted on Twitter, which is now known as X.
Blasphemy is a sensitive issue in ultra-conservative Pakistan, where anyone deemed to have insulted Islam or Islamic figures can face the death penalty.
Islamist rightwing leaders and political parties across the country frequently rally around the issue, politicians have been assassinated, European countries threatened with nuclear annihilation and students lynched over blasphemy allegations.
Christians make up about 2% of the population, occupy one of the lowest rungs in Pakistani society and are frequently targeted with spurious and unfounded blasphemy allegations.