Roots of Pakistani Christians
Submitted by Rashid Jahangiri.
The British Empire after militarily conquering India and taking power from Muslims changed its tactics to rule her subjects, especially Muslims. In order to rule India perpetually in a peaceful manner they launched missionary efforts with aim to convert Muslims of India to Christianity. It was good luck of Indian Muslims that Allah SWT appointed his Mujaddid of 14th Islamic Hijra Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad sahib, who with power of his pen, and employing tactics introduced to India by missionaries i.e. debates, discussions, publications, announcements, seminars prevented Christians missionaries to have significant success in converting Muslims to Christians. Had it not been the case, today, a high proportion of Pakistani Muslims, especially in Punjab, would be Christians.
As Christian Missionaries failed in their mission they turned their focus on Hindus.
Dil Nawaz, a researcher on religion and minorities’ rights at the National University of Ireland writes in his article, published on Pak Tea House blog:
“Pakistan’s approximately 2.8 million Christians constitute about 2 percent of the country’s 180 million people and are most concentrated in the province of Punjab. Christians are split evenly between Catholics and Protestants. Almost all embraced Christianity in mass conversions from Hinduism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in an effort to escape their status as “untouchables” (now referred to as Dalits).”
I hope opponents of HMGA, who accuse him of failing in his mission of preventing Muslims conversion to Christianity, can learn truth from Mr. Dil Nawaz.
Link to Dil Nawaz article:
Pakistani Christians and the Myth of Clash of Civilizations
http://pakteahouse.net/2011/08/06/pakistani-christians-and-the-myth-of-clash-of-civilizations/
From Zahid Aziz:
1. The native Indian Christian clerics and debators who clashed with Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad included converts from Islam, such as Deputy Abdullah Atham who left Islam in his youth in the 1850s and became a Christian after a Maulvi refused to answer his doubts and questions.
2. In 1982, just after our case in Cape Town was filed and the news reached Pakistan, two Christian bodies in Pakistan filed separate submissions to the Supreme Court in Cape Town for becoming parties to the case in opposition to the Ahmadis.
One submission was from the President of the National Masihi Kashtkar Party, Lahore, who pleaded that he be allowed to “expose the heretical and heathen beliefs of the followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad”, otherwise “the world-wide Christian community will suffer an irreparable loss and injury”. The other submission, along similar lines, was from the President of the Pakistan National Christian League. (I still have copies of these submissions.)
This intervention by Christian organisations calls to mind Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s often-made statement that Christian missionaries and the self-seeking, literalist Muslim Ulama would make common cause against him.