On Sunday, around 500 worshippers attended mass at the All Saints church in Peshawar, north-western Pakistan. After the service, they gathered outside the church to receive free food that was being distributed. As they did so, two huge explosions ripped through the crowd; a double suicide attack. The death toll currently stands at 81, with 100 more people injured. It was one of the most devastating attacks on the Christian population in Pakistan’s history.

It takes a lot to shock Pakistan, a country where small bomb attacks or targeted killings happen on a daily basis somewhere in the country, and often fail to make headlines. Nor are attacks on the country’s religious minorities anything out of the ordinary. At the beginning of this year, an enormous attack in a Shia Muslim area of the southern province of Quetta killed more than 80 people, while Sunni militants have carried out numerous execution-style killings of Shias.

Across the country, Muslims and non-Muslims alike have turned out to protest against Sunday’s attack and the government’s inadequate response.

Pakistan was explicitly conceived as a secular state with Islam as its main religion. My grandmother, who left Pakistan 40 years ago, watched the news on Sunday in horror: the country that was formed when she was a young woman had set out to be tolerant and inclusive. In an oft-quoted speech at the country’s creation, the founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah said: “We have many non-Muslims – Hindus, Christians, and Parsis – but they are all Pakistanis.” Over the years, with military dictator General Zia ul-Haq’s programme of Islamisation, and the increasing influence of extremists, this fundamental principle seems to have been lost.   »»» theguardian.com

Responsibility for the church bombing in Peshawar has been claimed by groups affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Both groups have a very un-Islamic belief that they and they alone are the only “true” Muslims. They attack Shia Muslims because the latter are a small minority in Islam. The attack Christians because they are not Muslims (although the Qur’an says Christians must be protected when they are a minority in a Muslim land). They also attack Christians in Pakistan because of U.S. drone strikes against Taliban operatives, who see the U.S. as a Christian government (in spite of its Constitutionally imposed secularism) and therefore they see all Christians as U.S. collaborators.

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