c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ An Anglican bishop from Pakistan _ where insulting the Prophet Muhammad and Islam is considered blasphemy and a capital offense _ told a Senate panel Wednesday (June 17) that”fear and insecurity”were a”noose”tightening around his nation’s minority Christian community.

The Rev. Munawar Rumalshah, bishop of the Church of Pakistan’s Peshawar diocese, said his nation’s small Christian community was particularly traumatized by the recent suicide of Roman Catholic Bishop John Joseph.

Joseph’s death in May, Rumalshah told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on religious freedom abroad,”utterly devastated my already marginalized community.” Moreover, he continued, Joseph’s death”triggered a chain reaction where the majority Muslim community is tightening the nose on the Christians in the most public fashion by physical harassment. … We are being socially ostracized and economically paralyzed simply for the `sin’ of being Christians.” Joseph killed himself to protest a death sentence given 26-year-old Ayub Massih, a Catholic, who allegedly blasphemed the Prophet Muhammad by speaking favorably of author Salman Rushdie, himself under a death sentence in Iran for his novel about Muhammad,”The Satanic Verses,”which many Muslims consider blasphemous. Pakistani Christians say the allegations against Massih were bogus and stemmed from a local land dispute.

Massih’s sentence was the latest in a string of Pakistani blasphemy cases in recent years. Some 200 Christians have reportedly been convicted under the Pakistani blasphemy law since 1986, although none have been executed by the government. Muslim mobs have, however, murdered a number of the accused Christians.

About 3 percent of Pakistan’s 140 million people are Christians. The majority belong to the Church of Pakistan, which includes Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Methodists.

Rumalshah’s testimony came in connection with the International Religious Freedom Act co-sponsored by Sens. Don Nickles, R-Okla., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. The bill is a competing measure to one already passed by a wide margin in the House of Representatives.

Despite White House opposition, Congress appears willing to pass some form of legislation to protect Christians and other religious minorities abroad. Congressional sources say the final product is likely to be a blend of the Senate and House versions.

The House version, sponsored by Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., is viewed as less flexible in its approach to offending nations. The White House opposes both measures because, it says, either would hamstring foreign policy efforts.

Religious persecution legislation is heavily backed by religious conservatives, who say minority Christians in particular face widespread and government-supported persecution in Muslim nations such as Pakistan, China, Cuba, Vietnam and elsewhere.

However, some moderate religious groups oppose the legislation, arguing that despite the good intentions, such laws will only add to the problem by prompting repressive governments made angry by U.S. action to crackdown further on their religious minorities.

United Church of Christ officials, for example, have said”Nickles-Lieberman may well have disastrous consequences in the Middle East and throughout the Islamic world (because) radical Muslim forces will be strengthened in their attempts to associate Christianity with the West.” However, Rumalshah backed the Nickles-Lieberman bill, which he noted addresses both gross and more subtle forms of religious persecution. The House bill only addresses more egregious cases.

Also testifying in favor of Nickles-Lieberman Wednesday was Richard D. Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s ethics and religious liberty commission.

Land said the bill was necessary because”the United States government has been woefully negligent in dealing with the issue of the persecution of Christians around the world. … We expect our government to insist that nations who want to be in good relation with us cease and desist from persecuting Christians.” Felice D. Gaer, an American Jewish Committee human rights expert, also backed the bill.”It is calibrated, can be situation-specific, offers flexibility in its application and imposition, but forces American policymakers and officials to ask questions, confront the facts, and explore realistic options available to them,”she said of the measure.

DEA END RIFKIN