ROME — Pope Francis on Sunday, March 16, condemned the bombings of two Churches in a Christian neighborhood in Lahore, Pakistan. The twin bombings — at one Catholic and one Protestant church —came as local Christians were attending Sunday Mass and services. The deadly blasts left 14 people dead and 78 wounded.
The attack followed last December’s Peshawar school massacre, when 7 gunmen — including one Chechen, two Arabs and two Afghans — entered the Army public school in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar and opened fire on staff and children, killing 145, including 132 children between 8 and 18 years of age.
The Taliban has claimed responsibility for all the attacks.
Now they are targeting all schools. Aleteia has obtained from sources in Pakistan a note to schools, addressed to “Apostate Rulers”, “Fools of Civil Society”, and “Appeasers of the Crusaders,” threatening further attacks on schools throughout Pakistan, including “Christian missionary ones, Army-owned, and those associated with the Western educational system.”
The note, pictured above, was recently disseminated throughout Pakistani schools and at other locations. According to sources, many people who received it had no idea how, or by whom, the notes were delivered, suggesting that the Taliban has penetrated into the fabric of the system.
Recently the Archbishop of Karachi and President of Pakistan’s Catholic Bishops’ Conference, His Excellency Joseph Coutts, was in Rome attending an event sponsored by the Vicariate of Rome.
While in Rome, Archbishop Coutts sat down with Aleteia for an interview. The Archbishop discussed the roots of the Taliban and how these once CIA-trained operatives are now using their expertise against the West; the reasons why they are now targeting schools and churches; and why, for them, the Crusades are not over.
Your Excellency, for those of our readers who are not familiar with Pakistan, can you tell us a little about its geography?
Pakistan is a fairly large country, nearly 2000 road miles from south to north, with an estimated population of 180 million. On the East, we have a huge border with India, nearly 2000 kilometers. Right on our head, we have a short border with China, with high mountains. The second highest mountain in the world — K2 — is in Pakistan, along with 4 or 5 other peaks that are among the highest in the world.
In the Northwest we have our border with Afghanistan, all mountainous area, a border of over 1000 kilometers. Then to the direct West is the border with Iran, and the Arabian Sea in the south.
You’re in a rough neighborhood.
Exactly. We’re also part of the roughness.
Yes, several brutal attacks have been carried about by the Taliban inside Pakistan in recent months. What can you tell us about the roots of the Taliban?
If you go back, the Taliban were created by our government, and financed by the United States and Saudi Arabia, to fight against the Soviet Union.
In 1979, the Soviet Union entered our neighbor Afghanistan. They had a local communist government and they were in difficulty so they invited help from the Soviet Union. In 1979, the Berlin Wall still stood in Europe, and when you said “Soviet Union” people cringed in fear.
The West became worried. They thought — according to the domino theory — that if Afghanistan fell to communism, next was Pakistan. If Pakistan fell to the Russians, they wouldn’t be far from the Gulf, the Western world’s sources of oil. So the West was determined to stop the Communists before they got any further. Shake hands with the devil if necessary. This was 1979.
The United States didn’t want to get into another messy war, and they found someone to do the fighting. Pakistan is a Muslim country. Afghanistan is 100% Muslim. So men were trained and used as proxies to fight the Russians in Afghanistan, along the mountainous border, which can’t be controlled.
Were all the men who were trained from Pakistan?
They were all Muslim, but from various countries, like ISIS is now. It was an open invitation to Muslim men anywhere. There were Arabs coming from Libya and Saudi Arabia. There were Indonesians, Chechens, and Pakistanis joining hands with their brothers in Islam fighting for their religion. The Soviet Union was beaten back.
But then a civil war developed in Afghanistan, and then 9/11, and everything got messy.
So these people were trained and many of the young men came back into Pakistan full of this zeal for having beaten back a superpower. They thought: “We can do it.” Pakistan is a Muslim country, so they said to themselves: “We should have an Islamic State here.” And then they started working on that.
Now they’ve become so strong, because a lot of arms came from the US and they were trained by CIA agents. So they have all the expertise, and combat experience. And now they are a big, big threat. They started by attacking a number of army posts. Imams preached in the mosques, praising them as great freedom fighters for their religion.
They are now working in a very insidious way. They’ve influenced the thinking of many young people to such an extent that 3 or 4 American girls have joined and they’ve discovered 3 British girls who have wanted to join. You can imagine how much more influential they are in Pakistan, with Afghanistan just next door. There are thousands of Afghan refugees living in camps here and there — lots of young men, good material to recruit. And now they are in our country.
What can you tell us about the Taliban’s thinking?
In order to understand the Taliban, you’ve got to also understand the type of Islam that exists in Saudi Arabia. Because it’s the thinking that makes you what you are.
These are the people who say no music, no dancing. Women should not go out unless they are covered. I’m told they even have a morality police, and when it’s Friday at prayer time, they make sure everyone is in the mosque. You can’t wear a cross in Saudi Arabia. You can’t take a Bible. It’s a 100% Islamic system. If you’re caught with drugs, they cut off your head and I’m told they still use a sword. They think they are killing someone who deserves to be killed. Apostasy is punishable by death, adultery by stoning, though I don’t know whether they still practice it.
That’s Saudi Arabia, a very extreme form of Islam.
Their thinking also depends on what they learn at the Madrasa [a school attached to a mosque where the Koran is taught].
The Muslim idea of Revelation is different than the Christian one. They believe the holy book was sent down by Allah, already made. [They believe] he first gave a holy book to the prophet Moses. Then he gave another holy book called the Torah, which for us is the first five books of the Bible. Then he gave another book — the book of Psalms — to the prophet David. Then the third holy book, as Muslims see it, was given to Jesus, who they believe is a prophet. They call it the Gospel, as Muslims see it, not the 4 Gospels. And the last holy book, they say, was given to the final prophet, Mohammed.
These are all holy books. And therefore they call the Jews and Christians “people of the book”. They say we all have revealed books. So a good Muslim looks at things broadly and will say: “You are my brother or my sister. We are people of the book”.
But the Islamic extremists say: “You are a Christian, you have three gods, and you say God has a son — God who is the Creator, all Mighty and all Merciful. This is a crazy religion. And you put statues in your churches and you light candles and adore them and kiss them. You should be killed. Don’t spread this rubbish religion of yours.”
That’s the extreme form of Islam. They say democracy is rubbish: “What is democracy? It’s man’s will. You are choosing. We are going the will of God.”
Therefore, the terrorists operating in Pakistan are basically attacking the State. We are a democratic country. We have a democratically elected government, however imperfect the democracy may be.
But something else is behind it. They look back at the glory days of Islam, when the Muslims were living in Spain. It was the time of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks. The Turks went almost up to Vienna. They had the Balkans and that whole area. They are looking back at the old Turkish Empire.
What is the most dangerous part of their thinking?
The most dangerous part of their thinking is that they say the Crusades never really ended. If you’re a fanatic Muslim, you look at the West as being Christian. Europe, the United States — all the “white” world, if you want — are Christians. Although not all Christians nowadays in Europe and the United States are.
They believe the Crusades have only taken on a different form. They believe the West — that means Christians — want to dominate and humiliate the Muslims. They point to Iraq and Afghanistan as examples. “See what they’ve done Iraq,” they say. “See what they’ve done in Afghanistan. See what they’re doing with those Zionists to oppress the Muslim Palestinians and grab their lands.”
So they say, “hit back”. They’ve been using the word “Crusaders” for the NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The mosque schools have often been used for brain-washing, to convince young boys that God is calling them to fight a holy war. When America was present in Afghanistan, there were up to 3 million Afghan refugees coming into Pakistan. The boys were taught to look at the poor children and the women fleeing, carrying their belongings on their back, and to think: “What are the Americans doing there?” They were told: “Don’t you see they are persecuting Muslims, and tomorrow they are going to be here. Do you think they’re just going to go away.”
And if you die, you’re a martyr for the faith. You’ll go straight away to heaven. That’s how they built up the Taliban.
They believe the West is coming to attack them, and they aren’t going to sit around and do nothing.
What is their goal?
To make Pakistan an Islamic State. They say democracy is un-Islamic, so they are against the government. People ask if Christians are being persecuted in Pakistan, but they’re not really aiming at us. They are aiming at the State.
Fortunately we have a good, large, well disciplined, standing army. But our army has been trained, armed and equipped to fight a conventional war with the so-perceived threat from India. That means we want F16 bombers. We want the latest heavy tanks. We want long range artillery.
Last year in June the army finally went into action. They put in 30,000 troops in this mountainous area.
We have learned they are now targeting all schools. Why?
Since the army has gone into action, they’re finding it tough to hit back at the military.
If the terrorists can’t hit the army, what do they do? They think: “We can’t get to the army, but there is an army school up north, where most of the kids are children of army officers. We’ll hit them where it hurts.”
That was such a brutal attack. Little children in school, hiding under the desks, another guy coming around, saying “that child is still moving” — bang. They were shooting them as if they were shooting animals. It was so bad. One hundred and thirty kids plus they burned one teacher, and they did it intentionally in front of the kids, so you can imagine.
They wanted to hurt … that’s what terrorism means: terrify you so that you say, “My God, I better not do anything, because these guys are vicious.” They terrify you.
What made them then attack churches?
When the government started providing more protection, they chose another target: churches. “Get the Christians.” I was telling somebody: If we start guarding our churches, putting our young men to look out for anyone suspicious, the terrorists may say: it’s now difficult to get the churches, let’s hit the hospitals.
How many things can you protect with hundreds of churches, thousands of schools? They could hit the railway station, where hundreds are getting on an off; or a bus station.
They could choose any target now, but they have specified schools for a reason: this is where you are teaching un-Islamic education, you are teaching the English language.
We value the English language. We have a kind of elite school, where the children can do what is called the Cambridge O-level examination. Higher than that is the A-levels. The terrorists say: That is all Western “crap”. I’m using the word, they didn’t. But that’s what they mean. They say: “Clean Pakistan. We want an Islamic system.”
So in this sense, when the Taliban attacked the churches, they were not saying: “Let’s go and attack the Christians.” If they had that in mind, they could just squeeze us. We are only two percent of the population. It’s really the State they are aiming at. They want to Islamize the country. And if they do succeed in that, then we will be in trouble indirectly as Christians.
How are the Christians generally responding after the attacks?
We are responding in another way. We have received a lot of sympathy from the Muslim community. I got a nice letter from the high court lawyers association, saying “we condemn this” and “this is not an Islamic way of going things, and we are with you.”
Last Sunday, I was still in Karachi. I was about to celebrate the evening Mass and the telephone rang. It was a group I didn’t know. They said they wanted to come and express their solidarity. It turned out to be a group of about 100 people. Most of them were university students — all Muslims. Plus people from civil society: a few doctors and lawyers. They all came and stood holding hands in front of the Church until the Mass finished, meaning to say: we don’t agree with what is happening, and we are here to protect you. Of course they were not armed or anything, but it was a great act of solidarity.
When Mass finished — it was celebrated in our language — I announced to the people: don’t get worried, when you go out of the Church you’ll see a lot of people standing outside. They are Muslims, but they are here to be with us. And pray for them too. It’s a very bold act.
Then I told the choir: Let’s sing one of two peace songs. So they quickly brought out the instruments and the little drums we have, and I greeted them, and they talked with me. And of course the press took photographs. And then I said: Let us all sing together. And our choir was very happy with that, because these were common songs.
Afterwards, I called a few of their leaders, 4 or 5 university students, a lady who was a doctor, and 2 or 3 lawyers, and I said: Let’s have a cup of tea, and we talked about these things and asked exactly that question: What can we do? It was a good discussion. The general consensus was that we need to awaken the sleeping majority, because it’s not the majority that is doing this.
Just after the attack on our church, a mosque was bombed in Karachi. And prior to that the army school was attacked, and all the kids killed were Muslims. And so we also need to express our sympathy, just as the Muslims now are coming to express their sympathy with us. What we are stressing is that we are citizens, and we are trying to wake up the government to do more.
Would the government listen to the small Christian population?
My thought always is: get the good, broad-minded Muslims together, like those who came to express their sympathy. While talking with them, the bombing of the mosque also took place. It belonged to a smaller sect of Muslims, a shiite sect. And he said: that group is scared now; we are going to go there on Friday, after Friday prayers, and we going to encourage them.
So we have to widen our thinking, and not think only in terms of the Christian community. There are other religious minority groups as well. We have to show solidarity towards one another.
Diane Montagna is Rome correspondent for Aleteia’s English edition.
