A heartbreaking yet inspirational story from Pakistan seems a good way to start the new year. It’s an incident that created a national hero in that strife-torn country and was fully reported in the US by top news outlet CNN (here), yet – as far as I can discover – seems to have been completely missed by mainstream media on our side of the Atlantic. I only heard about it over Christmas, two months after the event. It’s a story well worth re-telling.
On 20th October a burka-clad suicide bomber approached the double-storey women’s cafeteria at the International Islamic University in Islamabad where some 400 students were dining and socialising. He looked suspicious as female students do not normally veil in women-only areas. He shot and wounded a security guard at the entrance to the dining hall, whereupon 40-year-old caretaker Pervez Masih grabbed him and tried to hold him. The bomber instantly detonated the device, spraying ball-bearings and his own body parts over the entrance area and killing Pervez and three girl students.
“There would have been dozens of deaths had the bomber not been blocked by Pervez Masih,” said a senior university security official.
The caretaker, who reputedly earned just £40 a month and was his family’s sole breadwinner, was immediately proclaimed a hero for his self-sacrifice. “He’s now a legend to us,” one student is quoted as saying. “He saved our lives.”
The Pakistan government promised I million rupees (around £7,500) for Masih’s bereaved family; the university authorities contributed towards burial costs and also offered employment for his widow Shaheen and help with the education of his 3 year old daughter Diya; and student volunteers collected £400 plus toys and clothes for the family.
The interesting twist to this otherwise tragic story is that Pervez Masih came from Pakistan’s often-despised 2% Christian minority which regularly suffers discrimination and persecution in this 96% Muslim country. (‘Masih’ means ‘Messiah’ – Jesus Christ – and is the family name commonly taken as a badge of honour by Christians in Pakistan.)
“He rose above the barriers of caste, creed and sectarian terrorism,” said the rector of the university, Professor Fateh Muhammad Malik. “Despite being a Christian, he sacrificed his life to save the Muslim girls.”
True, but the “despite” betrays the Professor’s world-view. A different world-view would explain instead that it was because he was a Christian that Pervez sacrificed his life for the Muslim girls. His instincts made him follow in the steps of his Master who, the New Testament tells us, ‘gave his life as ransom for many’.
The Muslim bomber blew himself up in order kill others; the Christian caretaker sacrificed himself in order to save others. The Muslim bomber would have anticipated – wrongly and tragically – that his act of suicide and his consequent shaheed (Islamic martyr) status would deliver him straight into Paradise; the Christian caretaker will have known – and has now personally experienced – that his faith, confirmed by his self-sacrifice, would deliver him direct into heaven.
Jesus said it all: “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
January 8th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
I’m with you on this. I nominated this story the top story of 2009.
BBC Top Ten Religion Stories of the Year
And yes CNN was the only mainstream Western media outlet to take up this story, which is a crying shame:-
Pakistan university Janitor Pervez Masih, rose above the barriers of caste, creed and sectarian terrorism. Despite being a Christian, he sacrificed his life to save the Muslim girls.
January 8th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
Perhaps you should have started the year with some humility and introspection. A million innocents killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and you boast about Christian self-sacrifice for Muslims. Your selective blindness and spin is living up to your motto of “be as innocent as a dove and cunning as a snake.” How about starting the year with a little less arrogance and reflecting on the past decade and the millions that have died in the name of your religion in that period? I’ll start you off with four: Committed Christian, Steven Dale Green who was specially baptised before going into Iraq, with 10 members of the the coalition army gang raped 14-year old, Abeer Qasim Hamza, then killed her and set fire to her body, then killed her 9-year old sister, Hadeel, and their father and mother, Qassim Hamza and Fikhriya Taha. It is because of these innocents that your bible thumping nuclear super-coalition will never win Iraq and Afghanistan even against a bunch of poor illiterate goat heading bedouins. Their blood may be cheap in your eyes but it is not in the eyes of your creator.
January 9th, 2010 at 1:55 am
Paul,
(i) Arrogance – ‘undue assumption of importance’ (Chambers Dictionary). Where’s my ‘undue assumption of importance’ in this post?
(ii) It’s silly nonsense to state that ‘millions have died in the name of your religion’ over the past decade. Christianity has become so politically impotent over the past secularised half century that almost nobody and nothing happens in the name of Christianity, at least in this country. And note that almost all church leaders from the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury downwards were against the Iraq war – as, it happens, was I.
(iii) The Al-Mahmudiyah murders and rape were horrendous and it seems Green was fortunate to escape the death penalty although he instead got life without parole. I wasn’t aware that he was a Christian but I do know from reports that he had drug and alcohol problems and that prior to arrest he had been discharged from the US Army for an ‘antisocial personality disorder’. However this is still no excuse for what he did. Regrettably, it seems that the US government has not yet attempted to make any reparation for these murders in the way that the Pakistan government did immediately following the killing of Pervez Masih.
Alan Craig
January 12th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Paul cannot fault Alan for what he did say but what he did not say! How pathetic.
January 12th, 2010 at 2:27 pm
He’s really a true hero.
Seems the suicide bombing is so popular in some parts of the world, and it makes many heroes dead.