Archbishop Sebastian says Christians fight persecution with dialogue

CNS News (October 14, 2016): Christians in Pakistan are fighting persecution and terrorism with interfaith dialogue, said Bishop Sebastian Francis Shaw, Archbishop of Lahore.

Groups are being set up across Pakistan to help Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs better understand each other, Archbishop Sebastian Shaw told a meeting, hosted by the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need on 11th October, that recent efforts were beginning to “bear fruit.”

He said he hoped such dialogue would result in the mitigation of the country’s severe blasphemy laws, which have led to the lynching and jailing of increasing numbers of falsely accused Christians.

The archbishop told Catholic News Service that Christians were being wrongly accused of blasphemy at a rate of about one every two weeks.

“The blasphemy law is being misused against Christians and that must stop,” he said.

Because the Christian faith could not condone paying “evil with evil,” the solution to the “kind of persecution” was dialogue with the Muslim majority, he added.

The archbishop said Christians had met with senior Muslim scholars and imams in the hope of achieving change.