When I meet with Christian interfaith types in the UK, as I do from time to time, I am often baffled and frustrated by their enthusiasm for building links with Muslims and Islam and in particular Pakistani Muslims. I fail to see the point in doing this as rarely will Muslims when they are in a majority make any concessions towards Christians and this particular story from Pakistan regarding the way Christians are treated starkly illustrates this.

Christians in Faisalabad in Pakistan were gifted a piece of land to build a church on. These Christians, who were poor brickmakers, built their church but incurred the wrath of local Muslims for doing so.

According to a report on the Christian website World Watch Monitor, local Muslims objected to the presence of the church on the grounds that the town was majority Muslim. The Christians have nott been able to hold services in the church for months as they cannot get state security to guard their church whilst they are worshipping. Because the church is considered as illegal it is therefore not entitled to any physical protection from the Pakistani police and without security the Christians cannot worship in their church.

World Watch Monitor said:

Christians in a village in Pakistan’s Punjab province have been told to remove every visible sign of Christianity from their church, six months after being forced to sign a form pledging they would no longer hold services.

The 40 Christian families in Nayya Sarabah (Chak 336) village, part of Toba Tek Singh district near Faisalabad, haven’t held a service since before Christmas.

Muslim resident Hajji Muhammad Siddique told World Watch Monitor that, as “Muslims are in the majority in the village, we can’t allow a church here”.

“Now we are working with the civil administration to give a piece of land to Christians outside the village,” said Siddique, 73, who runs a dispensary. “When it is done, we will make the Christians write an agreement that they will sell this current church building or at least dismantle the church structure and crosses.”

“Most of the Christians of the village work as brick-kiln labourers,” he added. “It is only Rafaqat Masih, who, being a retired army personnel, is trying to be a leader and has helped build a church in the village.”

The church is run by Pastor Samuel Masih, but it is Rafaqat Masih, a union councillor for minorities, who has been at the forefront of efforts to resolve the matter.

This case plainly shows the sort of oppressive society that is created by Islam and created by many Muslim individuals, when Islam is allowed to be the guiding principle of a nation or a region. Islam has created in Pakistan a country with very little religious freedom, a nation where one religion rules all and every other belief is forced to be subservient to Islam. Pakistan is the sort of oppressive and violent shithole that one gets when Islam rules.

There is a massive irony about this story which I doubt will remain unnoticed for long by the readers of this piece and it is this: Almost every day in the United Kingdom there are Islamic groups, Imams, Islamic interfaith activists etc, appealing and pleading for there to be tolerance from the rest of us for the ideology of Islam and its followers. But just look what happens when Islam is in the majority as is the case of Pakistan? In that country, one dominated by Islam, there is no freedom of religion, no freedom of thought, no freedom of conscience and definitely no tolerance of anything other than Islam.

Pakistan is not just a shithole that those in more civilised nations, including nearby ones such as India, can point to and laugh at, Pakistan is also a cautionary tale. It is a warning about what might happen to cherished freedoms such as religious freedom if Islam ever gained the sort of influence here in the civilised world as it has in uncivilised Pakistan. By examining the real Islam that created Pakistan alongside the fake ‘religion of peace’ guff that Islam promoters feed to Britain’s interfaith crowd we can see the dichotomy between the two positions. We can plainly see that Islam and its followers demand tolerance for themselves, but readily deny such tolerance to others.