Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says his Islam is one of "enlightened moderation". If only it were so in Pakistan, writes Graham Usher in Sangla Hill Sangla Hill is a small market town in Pakistan's Punjab province. On 12 November, Muslims attacked the town's tiny Christian community. Three churches, three parish houses, a convent school and a hostel were ransacked. It was the worst incident of sectarian violence against Pakistan's Christian minority in recent memory. But it is one on a curve of anti-Christian harassment that has climbed ever higher since the strikes on the US on 11 September 2001. "It is as though burning churches in Pakistan has become a kind of revenge against George Bush," noted one of the few newspaper editorials on the Sangla Hill "incident". The cause for the violence is mired in dispute. Muslims say it came after a local Christian torched a Muslim seminary, desecrating Qurans in the act. Under Pakistan's draconian blasphemy laws, this is a crime punishable by death. Local Christian clerics say the alleged Quran burning was rigged by two Muslims who owed the Christian a gambling debt. What is not in dispute is that the attack was organised. On news of the burnt Quran, imams, local political leaders and councillors went to the mosques, calling on their people to "teach a lesson to the unbelievers". Schools were closed and hundreds of supporters of Pakistan's various Islamist organisations bussed in, including, say sources, "students" from Sipah-e-Sahaba -- a supposedly banned group notorious for sectarian violence not only against Christians but also Pakistan's Shia Muslims. Eyewitnesses recount how these swelled into a mob of around 2,000, armed with hockey sticks, iron rods and cans of kerosene. Around 100 entered first the Presbyterian then the town's main Catholic churches, with leaders allocating tasks as to who would burn which building. The purpose appeared to be to harm things rather than people, with the emphasis on sacrilege. In the Presbyterian Church a wooden cross was broken in two over the ashes of 50 burned Bibles. In the Catholic Church, a marble alter lay smashed amid hosts crushed underfoot and a prised open tabernacle. Nor is there much dispute that the police were either complicit or guilty of gross negligence. The Catholic priest, Samson Dilawar, called the police on 11 November, some 12 hours before the attack, after stones had been thrown at his church. "I told them that we would need tight security, that tensions were running high. They assured me there would be protection. The next morning there were three police officers outside the church, who ran as soon as the mob came." It was the same in the Presbyterian Church. "The night before the attack the police came to our house," says Zimran Pervez, the son of the pastor. "They told my father 'the circumstances are not good'. They said they could protect the church but not the family". In fact, they protected neither. Zimran and his kin fled that night, along with most of Sangla Hill's 1,000 Christians. He returned two days later to find his home a blackened husk. Nor has there been much of an official response. The Pakistani press, Urdu and English, gave scant coverage to the attack. It took five days for a senior government official to visit Sangla Hill, Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi. He said he would "suspend" certain police officers and hold a "thorough" enquiry. But he made no pledge to arrest the men who had incited the crowd to violence or hold an independent judicial investigation. As for Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, he condemned the alleged burning of the Quran and the actual attack on an entire community "equally". The result is a Christian minority vulnerable not only in Sangla Hill but across Pakistan, at the mercy, they feel, of a majority community whose religious leadership is being taken over by avowedly sectarian groups who view any difference as sacrilege and faith as a mixture of hate and fear. That polarisation is palpable on the streets of Sangla Hill. On the one side, literally, are the Christians, holding open-air services outside their torched houses of worship. On the other are the Muslims, business as usual in the market, but with sullen stares for every foreign visitor. "This is your church, America's church", says one. Can the rift be healed? "It will take action," says Father Dilawar. "The government has to dismiss the police officers, punish the culprits and repeal the blasphemy law -- this has become a licence to kill us every time there is an argument between a Muslim and a Christian. It will also take time. When you go out into the town now, people say they are sorry for what happened. But at the moment it mattered, when we were under attack, all the Muslims stood by -- and some participated. We feel we have no Muslim friends in Sangla Hill, and we're scared."
