The recent atrocities against Christians in Pakistan will sear the imaginations of countless people of all faiths throughout the world. As the minister of law in the Punjab has already said, such actions are not the work of true Muslims: they are an abuse of real faith and an injury to its reputation as well as an outrage against common humanity, and deserve forthright condemnation.
The small congregation in Toronto where I help out has members who come from the area where the recent murders took place. Their accounts of the local terror visited upon Christians is heart-rending. It should be noted that they agree with the Archbishop here: most of their Muslim neighbors are good to them and wholly reject the actions of the murderers. However, as in Nigeria, the international community with purchase on local governments — especially the US and Britain in this case — cannot morally afford to do anything but press hard and vocally for the protection of Christian minorities. And Christian leaders in the West must be unrelenting in their advocacy on behalf of these persecuted brethren. It is one of the tragic consequences of the current struggles among Anglicans that our own voice has become distracted and diluted in this task — witness the sorry spectacle in the Eastern Congo, which simply dwarfs all other present tragedies combined, and in which alas our churches are variously complicit.