Islamic militants target Catholic school in Pakistan

BY STAFF REPORTER
A CATHOLIC-RUN girls’ school on Pakistan’s north-west frontier has reopened after a weeklong closure prompted by threats from Islamic militants.
While the girls’ school was closed a bomb exploded in another Catholic school in the province.
The Public High School for Girls in Swat reopened last week after a letter warned the Apostolic Carmelite Sisters running the school to close the “factory of Christians” or face suicide attacks, according to the Asian church news agency UCA News.
When the school reopened, seven police officers were deployed to guard it as about half of its 950 students showed up for class. All but three of the school’s teachers are women.
The group Jan Nisaran-eIslam sent the letter to the Swat Press Club and local newspapers published it on September 9. The letter accused the nuns of converting the mostly Muslim students to Christianity and involving them in illicit activities.
The two-page letter accused “insolent Muslims” of sending their daughters to the school to make them foreigners. It said the nuns take the girls to a church behind the school office at night and teach them to pray in “their own fashion”.
It said the nuns involve the girls in adultery and the girls wear only “a 2in sash”. It alleged the girls are made “accomplices in Internet chatting” and are compelled to watch nude pictures under the “veil of computer classes”.
The letter demanded the expulsion of Christian and male staff and insisted on the burka, clothing covering the whole body except the eyes and hands, as the school uniform.
Bishop Anthony Lobo of Islamabad-Rawalpindi said that when he met with the Swat district co-ordination officer he demanded protection for the convent and the school.
Bishop Lobo said the threat is an effort to seize control of the school.
The bishop told UCA News: “It seems that Islamists are trying to drive away the nuns.” But such threats have not targeted just the Catholic school.
“This is not Islamisation but extremism in the name of religion,” Bishop Lobo said.
In recent months unidentified people distributed letters in the area warning women not to go shopping, instructing drivers of female students to install a purdah – a curtain or veil – in their vehicles, and demanding that women stop working as actresses and at beauty salons.
Some cinemas have been ordered to close or face bombings. Cable television operators recently stopped transmissions after receiving similar threats, while video shops have closed down or stock only Islamic cassettes.