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May the Blind See Posted on 05/16/2008 08:15 AM   |  EMail to Friend   |  View Comments (0)

On a Friday morning when Muma and I go to Furdos Market to the butcher, we always pass by old Baba Raheem Khan. He is a blind man who sits in the shade of the shops and has done so since I was a little girl. Muma remembers him from when she was 18. On Fridays he sits a little further in because he is in his whitest starched Shalwar Kameez and wants to keep it clean for Friday prayers. For as long as I can remember he has sat there with his wrinkled face and grey hair chanting poetry in praise of Mohammad, the prophet of Islam. On Fridays, however, he calls out to the people reminding them that all faithful believers must go to the mosque. He speaks with sincerity and his face never looks twisted or angry. From his conversations I have heard him tell people how sad it is that Christians do not believe in the Koran and God’s renewed word. Sometimes I look at him and pray that in the spiritual and physical darkness that captivates him, the light of Jesus will shine out. It all began when I was 18 and walked past him with Mum and the words that came to mind were ‘The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light’ (Isaiah). I know that was a nudge from the Holy Spirit. Since then I pray for Baba Raheem and his young son who sits in another Market place. Him too I have seen grow up. He was about 5 or 7 when the Madrassa’s teachers (religious school) brought him there. He too is blind and brought in every afternoon and taken home at night. My heart aches for them both as they sit for hours on end, expressionless in face and song. Yet with years of experiences we will never know about. Shall we call his son Naseer, just to give him a name? I ask you to pray for Naseer and Baba Raheem and for all the blind people in Madrassas in Pakistan. Their bread and butter is assured by the Madrassas, they have known no other life. That’s where they have lived and grew up. If they left the Madrassa or turned away from Islam they would be killed without having any defense or anyone to turn to. Their blindness will not even let them know where the death blow is coming from. One of the first known believers and martyrs of the Afghan Church, a Father to the Afghan Church in many ways, was also a blind believer. Brother Zia, a brother who came to know Jesus through a Braille Bible. That’s what gives me so much hope for Baba Raheem and Naseer and the many others like them. Oh please pray for them. One day I want to look at Naseer or Baba Raheem and I want their eyes to shine, faces to glow and their testimony and praise be to Jesus. Oh what a beautiful song that would be! We never heard from Brother Zia once they kidnapped him. We never saw a body or received a report. So the price for these men would be high. Some may say this is impossible because they have no interaction with Christians. As women, Muma and I cannot talk to him, it would be in appropriate. There are too many men and students from the Madrassa around him to let any Christian man start a discussion with him. One thing I know is that Baba Raheem and Naseer are sincere men; they truly love God with all their heart. Please pray with me that they will love the only God there is and Jesus who is His only Son and that they will love Him because who so ever loves Him and believes in Him shall not die but have eternal life. Amen

The B Word Posted on 05/14/2008 08:00 AM   |  EMail to Friend   |  View Comments (0)

Bombs, bombs, and more bombs! I was at an airport, travelling with Papa. I accompanied him on one of his business trips so I could take photographs of new Arab buildings and do an essay project on the change in Arab architecture and its socio economic significance. I said the ‘B’ word – ‘Bomb’! All eyes turned to look at me. Papa flashed me a look. ‘Please do not use that word here’. I apologized because since 9/11 as Pakistanis we have become very aware of people watching us and being nervous about us. My brothers are turning into strapping men, handsome and all, but tall, Asian, dark haired and teenagers. They fit the terrorist profile and get stopped everywhere. The first time we travelled after 9/11 a young lady saw us board a flight and started crying and called her parents to say goodbye! You may think I am making this up but this is the truth! The truth is also that we live in a world where trust and hope are being eroded. Yes there are those who may look a lot like Andrew and Peter (my brothers) who wouldn’t lose an opportunity to blow themselves and innocents up for Jihad. The truth for us is that bombs are not a word that sets off alarms – it is becoming an every day reality in my country. I said the ‘B’ word because I was reading from a newspaper and trying to talk to Papa and have a personal private conversation with him about the Cathedral school that got blasted same time as the Federal Investigation Agency in Lahore. A Cathedral school where 2 little Christian kids, Anita and Emmanuel and the long standing community book shop run by Catholic nuns was destroyed. My community suffered, innocent little children and others died and while there were those who were rejoicing that men had given their lives in jihad, I could not even express my grief at the loss of life and Church property that my community had suffered. I wonder what Anita and Emmanuel’s parents are going through. I wonder what we will do without the Nun’s bookshop. Christians in Lahore have been going there for years. Whenever my family visit Lahore we go there to pick up Christian Music and greeting cards etc… They stocked candles and resources for churches. It’s all gone! And no one even mentioned it on the news. The only interest was in the Federal Investigation Building and an advertising agency. No one spoke of the loss to the Sacred Heart Cathedral. Every day there is something new and tragic. Please pray for us. More recently there have been two bombs one in Islamabad where some foreign workers were wounded and one Turkish woman was killed. Then there was one in South Waziristan. Please pray for Pakistani troops, among them are a handful of Christians who have by a divine miracle made it into the army. Please pray for them, for Jesus to be real to them in the midst of increasing tension and increasingly Islamic tendencies on the fronts. Pray that they will be Jesus to those who walk in darkness. Pray for my country, my family and that each night we be reunited as a family, for each family in the Church in Pakistan, I ask you to pray this prayer.

Media Driven or Christ Led? Posted on 05/11/2008 01:00 PM   |  EMail to Friend   |  View Comments (0)

Adefa’s lack of information on the struggle of Christians in North Nigeria and the proceeding conversations with Anna left me acutely aware of the need for further deepening in my relationship with Jesus. I seem to have become boxed into relying on news and media for prayer points. My mind went back to those really sad stories Anna had whispered about. The 12 girls’ story was horrific and still made me weep. Their bus was road jacked, they were dragged off the bus, raped and left for dead in fields. No one was ever brought to justice for this heinous act. Then Amjad- the young Christian who worked for a Muslim family down the road from us. He was forbidden from going into their house as he was a cleaner specifically employed for the outside of the house. As he was not a Muslim he was fit only for the most menial labour. After 3 years of working- he was framed for a theft worth thousands of dollars (millions of rupees) at that house, abused and violated in every possible way by the other domestic workers there. We knew the story because he used to play cricket with my brothers in the evenings after work. It had shocked and grieved them when his injuries had made him bed ridden, leaving them helpless and unable to seek justice- which is the hardest part. The injustice of it had escaped Anna from her corner in England. She realises she was being brainwashed and reformed in her thinking by what the media was giving her. Adefa and Anna made me aware something was lacking of late in my own walk. I was spending time with Him, praying for secret believers and all the news items which indicated hard times for Secret Christians in Muslim countries. But was I allowing the Holy Spirit to tell me when to pray and guide my prayers? No! 1 Corinthians 12:26 tells us when one part of the body suffers all do, when one is honoured all rejoice with it. Why then do we rely on the secular or Islamic media to give us information? They give us important information but as I mentioned before, its part fact. We must turn the ears of our heart toward the voice of the Lord that He may be able to touch and guide us in our praying for one another. Praying for one another is part of our Christian walk, we must allow the Spirit to urge us to pray and guide us by His direction. After all Paul, the apostles and the early Church did not have CNN or BBC to inform them of the sufferings and needs of their brethren! How did Ananias find Paul? It was a vision in Acts 9:10 that directed him to go find Paul after his conversion experience on the road to Damascus. In Acts 16:9 it was a vision that led Paul to go to Macedonia. The media is a help, but it perhaps is undermining the Holy Spirit’s direction and guidance. The media may not even care about secret believers. Christ does and the Holy Spirit can guide us better than any other to pray for brethren- even those we do not know. Paul did not know the brother in Macedonia. Let your hearts be turned to God and guided by Him praying for secret believers.

Fridays Posted on 05/09/2008 09:00 AM   |  EMail to Friend   |  View Comments (0)

Some of you may be saying TGI FRIDAY- but Fridays in my city have a feel all their own. Muma and I always wake up a little earlier on a Friday to go to the shops as I do not have class till 10:30. We try to make it before the market closes for Friday prayers, which in the Islamic week is the Holy Day. In the afternoon, Muslims head toward the mosque where they say their main afternoon prayer together and receive a ‘khutba’ or a sermon from their Mullah. By about 2:30 this afternoon every loud speaker of every mosque in our locality will be switched on and for miles we hear the sounds of mullahs preaching. Some will talk about Allah’s judgment on Pakistan for not following the Shari’a, others about Allah’s judgement on the West because they are non Muslim and have strayed from the moral code that Hazrat Isa gave them in the Injil. Traditionally in Pakistan it is only men who go to the mosque but that trend is beginning to change with more women demanding that men restore their right to go to the mosque and have their own section separated from the men in the mosque. I smile because I can hear you say ‘What on earth is this girl talking about?’ If you are one of those who have never heard this before then let me explain: In Islam: Jesus is Hazrat Isa and considered ONLY A PROPHET. Not God, never His Son and never the one who died on the cross for our sins. Also in Islam Judas was killed on the cross rather than Jesus. (This theory has several different slants but always that Jesus was taken to heaven by God without any wounds, torture or suffering and someone else was given in his place on the cross.) It was Isa they believe who gave mankind the Injil which is the Gospel. However, Islam no longer subscribes to those as they exist because of the strong teaching that Isa never proclaimed himself as God and the Injil was corrupted by the followers of Jesus for their own glorification and power (Especially Peter and Paul who are blamed the most for this corruption). It was due to the corruption first of the Torah as given to Hazrat Musa (Moses who Islam declares to be a Muslim) and then of the Injil given to Isa, that Allah had to send us his final prophet Mohammad with the Koran. No one has managed to ever change the Koran. If you can get your head around the fact that Satan has taken the truth of the Old Testament and the New Testament and has used the Koran to plant simple lies in the mind of the reader, then you can understand the perversion which is attributed to the West. Muslims see Christians and Westerners as part of the same identity. They assume that all ‘White’ people are Christian because for so long Jesus was shared with them as a blond haired and blue eyed prophet. In light of this, every Friday becomes a reinforcement of every lie Satan has planted in the minds of Muslims through the Koran and Islamic teaching. That ought to give you some food for prayer for believers in the Muslim World.

Imagining Reality Posted on 05/07/2008 12:00 PM   |  EMail to Friend   |  View Comments (0)

Many of our brethren in Nigeria are going through some pretty difficult times. There are many Nigerian students in Pakistan and some of them are Christians who come to our church. Our youth pastor, Daood, was talking to Adefa, one of these students. Daood asked him about the difficulties for Christians in Nigeria and if his family was safe. Surprisingly he said that actually there’s a lot of freedom and in south Nigeria where he lives is Christian, but its harder in the North. Sadly he had never really had news from the North. ‘The media do not inform us of the situation in the North, it’s like a different country’. Adefa did not seem unconcerned about the situation – he just seemed unaware. As my mind played with the situation, I wondered if we had become paranoid, creating sensation rather than looking at reality? For a moment I wondered if we were living in a make believe world of persecution and secrecy. My cousin Anna moved to England some years ago and is here on holiday. When she left in 2002, to study, she faced a lot of criticism from people telling her that Christians in third world countries make up this whole ‘persecution’ thing and its mostly paranoia. I battled for some time with this. Do we respond to the media in this age? After we prayed, turned out the lights and slipped under the light cotton sheets, we whispered late into the night, talking about freedom and persecution and how she was struggling to talk about it in England. ‘Maaria,’ she had said guiltily, almost hiding her voice behind the whir of the fan, ‘I struggled after the accusations – I asked myself do we really make up stuff- convincing ourselves of hardship? What is persecution and what are secret churches? They are so secret I have not seen them, it’s so subtle I cannot define it… It all seemed vague. Sometimes I forget the faces of the 12 young Christian women from the Punjab some years ago who worked in a factory and even about Amjad’. Please do not let these blogs become a fun thing to read. Do not forget what you read- do not let it go vague and turn hazy in light of the news and the TV shows you watch. They are important but they are rooted in Christ and so what they give you is only part fact, and part fact will only take you further away from the needs of your brethren who live with the whole reality of persecution. Ask God to guide you in how to pray for us.

So Many Channels! Posted on 05/02/2008 09:00 AM   |  EMail to Friend   |  View Comments (0)

In my last blog I mentioned how much Pakistan has changed. Its development and progress I must say have been stagnant in some ways. When Musharraf took power in ’98 he was a tremendous encouragement to Pakistan’s media. Shortly after he took power we had a host of new media channels on air. I grew up with PTV (national channel) and STN a private channel which came on air in about 1994 I think. Am I boring you with the details? Sorry! The only other TV channels we had access to were if we climbed onto our roofs and played with the antenna and then we caught some Indian TV off the air waves. But that was illegal and after attempting it once my brother and I were in deep trouble. We wanted to watch a cricket match and it was showing only on Indian TV because Pakistani TV had taken a break for an Islamic show. Of course the other way to get new TV shows was buying a Dish Antenna which was ever so expensive. Now however the only way to watch TV is to have a special cable and get Cable TV which gives you access to all the new Pakistani TV Channels like GEO, Indus TV, AAG etc… and then we are now able to get Indian Channels (Star TV, Star Plus, Zee TV, Sony entertainment), BBC World, CNN international, FOX, Hallmark etc… The list could go on forever. We suddenly have access to the world. I can not put my finger on it and say when it happened but it exposed us to the morality, society, religion, laws, fashion, trends and quite simply LIFE of the rest of the world. Through it all the work of Islamic extremists has been consistent and subtle. Though fashion TV has been popular, and Textile and Fashion Design has become the current most popular degree apart from Computer Sciences, the TV shows that teach Islam and discuss Islamic Jurisprudence and inform the public of their faith, their duty and their rights has also gone up. Where before there was one channel which shared its time out to give us a taste of religion, culture, news etc… now there are numerous channels with triple even quadruple the amount of Islamic channels broadcasting Islamic sermons, songs, poetry and teaching all day long. So while fashion TV is doing its thing and the modernists and liberals are trying to say its ok for women to wear a sleeveless top and skin tight jeans and dresses, they are a small minority and are still vulnerable to the teaching of the extremists. Two years ago some of the young teachers from a madrassa (Islamic school) had taken black paint and gone around defacing models on billboards and there was a message sent out by word of mouth ‘Its black paint for the models on the billboards but it will be acid on their faces if we see them that way in the Markets’. No cases were reported except in the North in tribal areas. But when you pray for us, pray for a nation that is going through a cultural schizophrenia. They are pulled between the desire to be modern and the fear of extremists. Many who have been former models and have had their fun have suddenly gone the other way and donned a black robe and head scarf because they have been intimidated and filled with fear that their life style is displeasing to Allah. Every time you wear color or clothes you like and chose for yourself, thank the Lord for the privilege of being able to choose colors and develop your style. But also be aware that the world is watching you and the way you as a Christian dress and behave can either draw men and women to the Lord or put them off completely.