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PAKISTAN: CHRISTIAN STUDENT ATTENDS UNIVERSITY AS A MINORITY
Maaria, A Voice from Pakistan.

At 20, Maaria is a member of the literary society at her provincial university in Pakistan. She is a Pakistani Christian and belongs to a family who can trace their Christian heritage back three generations. This means that Maaria's family were Christians before 1947 which was when Pakistan was born and seperated from India. In Pakistan this is the safest kind of Christian to be. If you, or your family, are found to have converted to Christianity after 1947 you become targeted in an organized form of persecution and violence for having turned from Islam which is a criminal act under Pakistan's penal code. The majoirty of Pakistan's community is Muslim, most are of the opinion that Pakistan was made for Muslims and should therefore cater to Muslims. However, the Constitution and even the flag of Pakistan inluced miniorities such as Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, Jains and a handful of Jews in the population of Pakistan. Constitutionally, as long as these minority groups do not evangelize they are free to worship in their churches and temples in accordance to the words of the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

Maaria is a Pakistani Christian who has been to both Christian run schools which were established before 1947, as well as Government run educational institutions like her present university. Here she is one of a handful of Christians on the campus while most of her fellow students are Muslims. Some of them are becoming increasingly more inclined to the extremist forms of Islam on campus, which are even threatening to remove women from educational institutions altogether, both as students and teachers. There are others who are inclined toward Extremist Islam but they do not advocate removing women from campus. However, they do constantly observe their behavior and have a long list of do's and don'ts for women on the campus. There are also the more liberal people on campus who don't really care which camp you are in, as long as you allow them to do what they want. The shift from group to group is constant, but of late the latter group has become cornered and is becoming smaller as a result.

Maaria goes to a church in her city which has a struggling youth group that you will get to hear more about in the coming months. She will blog about them and her family as she familiarizes you with her world and shows you how to pray with her for her nation, family, and church. She is a Middle Eastern Studies and Literary student and does a lot of traveling with her father who is a businessman and must travel around Saudi Arabia, the Far East and some other Arab countries. She has one younger brother and one older brohter and sister. Her mother, Seema, is a teacher at a school in the city, teaching 9-15 year olds. Maaria and Seema are best friends. They both want to raise the prayer profile of men and women in the Islamic world, especially Pakistan, and make you aware of the world they live in and what really goes on there.

Welcome to the world of Maaria, the face of millions of Christian young people in the Islamic world. Through her you will meet the secret believer Christians she knows and she will tell us about their lives and how we can be praying for them.