Christian-Muslim Coexistence in Peshawar City

Several scholarly works and media reports claim that the Christian minority in Pakistan is mistreated, persecuted, and discriminated against, giving an overall impression as if Christians are alienated from the main social stream everywhere in Pakistan and that the public at large is responsible for their miseries. Noticing that most of the above-mentioned works are theoretical or based on journalistic information, an attempt has been made through this empirical case study of Peshawar city to know the situation of Christian-Muslim coexistence on the ground. For this purpose, a mix method approach was used combining quantitative survey, qualitative interviews, and group discussions. Contrary to the prevailing negative impression, this study reveals that to a large measure Christian and Muslim communities are living together peacefully, at least in Peshawar city. Quantitatively, 68% of respondents, both Christians and Muslims, viewed their mutual social and neighborhood interaction as positive. The results of qualitative interviews also supported these findings. It is, therefore, concluded that apart from some Christian concerns which need to be addressed, overall Christian-Muslim coexistence at the societal level might not be marred by religious differences everywhere in Pakistan. Negative generalizations in this regard need to be revisited, to say the least.


Background
Pakistan came into being in 1947 as a separate homeland for Muslims of the Indian subcontinent where they could live by their religious aspirations and safeguard their economic interests. Today, Pakistan is a country with an overwhelming Muslim majority. According to the census of 1998, Muslims are 96.28 %of the country"s population, while Hindus are 1.6 % and Christians 1.59 % (Pakistan Bureau of Statistics). Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948, who spearheaded the freedom movement of Pakistan, had declared in clear terms that minorities would have full religious and cultural freedoms with equal citizenship rights like their Muslim compatriots (Malik, 2002). Thus, the constitution of Pakistan promises adequate provisions for minorities of the country to profess and practice their religion and develop their culture (2012, pp. 12-16). However, religious minorities of the country in general and the Christian minority in particular often complain about different types of political, legal, and social discrimination. was due to the struggle of these missionaries that the New Testament was translated into Pashto in 1863 (Zafar, 2000, p. 89). Later on, the missionaries built All Saints Church in 1883, at the opening of Koochi Bazaar (Jan, 2013). Saint Michael"s Catholic Church is the oldest Catholic Church in the city. It was constructed in 1851. (Note 2) It is located on the Mall road close to Sadder. The church shares a boundary wall with Jamia Uloom-ul-Islamia. Another church, Saint John Vianney"s Catholic Church is situated on City Circular Road. It was built in 1937 (Note 3). Both Saint Michael and this church work under the Roman Catholic Diocese of Islamabad-Rawalpindi. Other churches in Peshawar include Seventh-Day Adventist Church on the opposite side of Saint John Church in the cantonment area, Catholic Church, New Apostolic Church and Salvation Army Church in Rural Academy Town, United Church in University Campus, and Assembly of God Church in Naseer Abad.
In 1972, when Pakistan Peoples Party"s government tried to impose its nationalization policy in Pakistan, the provincial government led by the alliance of National Awami Party and Jamiat-Ulma-e- Islam, with Maulana Mufti Mahmood (1919-1980 as Chief Minister, refused the policy of nationalizing any educational institutions of the province. Thus, Christian schools and colleges continued serving in KPK continuously since the 19th century while in the rest of Pakistan many of these institutions remained nationalized for about four decades. Today, numerous Christian educational institutions are functioning excellently, like Edward College, Peshawar, Edward's School Peshawar, Pennell School Bannu, among many others (Shamsi, 2011, p. 89).
Ethnically, the Christians of Peshawar are mostly Punjabis. This means that they are both religious and ethnic minority in Peshawar. They speak Punjabi, Urdu and to some extent Pashto dialects. They dress like Pashtuns which implies an inclination to adjust to local culture.

Literature Review
There is a huge literature on the condition of minorities in Pakistan which gives generally a negative impression about the status of religious minorities in Pakistan as inferior compared to the Muslim majority of the country. For instance, Ajay K. Rainaa (2014) writes: "Pakistan"s minorities are woefully small and politically powerless... Minority representation is small, qualitatively poor and structurally tied to the majority"s largesse." S.S. Akbar Zaidi (1988) talks about the perpetual fear of violence that the minorities in Pakistan are faced with. Roger Ballard portrays an even more dismal picture of their state of affairs and uses the term "ethnic cleansing" while describing the treatment of the majority with the religious minorities in Pakistan. In his own words: [T]he formal institutions of the state are both unable and unwilling to offer significant protection to those who find their lives threatened by an ever more powerful collection of neo-fundamentalist non-state actors who are ready and willing to teach their chosen targets amongst Pakistan"s religious minorities (and now those who speak up for their rights as well) a lesson: namely that their only proper fate is to be subjected to ethnic and religious cleansing. (2015) Rehman and Zia review various educational policies of Pakistan and find some of them problematic for the country"s religious minorities (2010). Another study maintains that textbooks of social and Pakistan studies create a negative and hostile image of the country"s religious minorities (Ghazi, Shahzada, Khan, Shabeer, & Shah, 2011). Similarly, Ahmed, Hassan and Shahzad (2014) opine that: "Media in Pakistan is also playing a little bit biased role in the reporting of issues related to religious minorities." More importantly, according to a report of the National Commission of Justice and Peace (2011), the marginalization of minorities exists in the whole social system. Thus, these writings create an impression that minorities in Pakistan are discriminated against, mistreated, and threatened everywhere in Pakistan, and that the public at large is responsible for their sorry state of affairs.
Speaking specifically about the Christian minority, Gabriel (2007, p. 103) discusses legal, religious, security, educational and other problems faced by Christians in Pakistan. He concludes that the "state of Christian-Muslim relations in Pakistan seems to present a bleak picture." Gregory (2008) argues that the Christian"s persecution and killing in Pakistan took momentum after 9/11. He maintains that after this incident many Christians have been killed. He further states that every year thirty to fifty Christians are murdered due to their religious faith. Besides killing, he claims that thousands of Christians are facing severe pressure and oppression from the Muslim community. By giving some statistics of the supposed Christian persecution from 2001 till 2008, Gregory concludes that Christians are persecuted across the whole Pakistan including Peshawar, Murree, Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi. He further asserts that the violence against Christians is sometimes patronized by the state on the government and local levels (Ibid). Misra relates the perceived persecution of the Christian minority in Pakistan with extremist Islamist ideology (2015). Recently in December 2015, Pakistan Christian Post published an interview of a Christian woman in which she is reported to have said: "Life for Christians in Pakistan is now worse than ever: we are attacked daily and treated worse than rats. Muslims do not want us as their neighbors because they believe we are evil and have satanic diseases." (Smith, 2015).
Some studies specifically deal with Christian-Muslim interaction in Pakistan and the social status of Christians. One such study is a report published by Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (2013) which claims that the overall Muslim attitude towards Christians is negative and that Muslims consider them untouchables due to their lowest social status and backward caste before conversion to Christianity. On the other hand, Moeller, Love, and Micheli (2011) argue that the overall Christian-Muslim relations have improved after 9/11. They state that it is media which holds people back to see progress in Christian-Muslim relation. According to them, the journalists selectively pick up certain events and sometimes they frame them in a different context to create negativity about the Christian in the eyes of the general public. They do report violent attacks committed against Christian minorities in some Muslim countries but for them, such crimes take place everywhere including the most liberal societies like America where Muslims are facing the heightened prejudice and aggression from a particular segment of the American population. In short, according to them the overall Muslim-Christian relationship is improving Khalid and Tarar (2004) have studied inter-group perceptions of Christians and Muslims in Pakistan and conclude that apart from religion social status also affects their mutual perceptions. Similarly, Shamsi has written a Ph.D. thesis on Social Status of Christians in Pakistan in which he concludes: "Pakistan's overwhelming majority is tolerant and in favor of giving equal rights to minorities and women" (2011, p. 157). Unfortunately, the study does not touch upon every day and neighborhood interaction of the minority Christians with the majority of Muslim Pakistanis.
Concerning media depictions of Christians in Pakistan, Rebecca Seiler claims that the media is unfair towards Christians and airs biased reports against them which renders it equally responsible for aiding and abetting in their persecution (2014, p. 7). Contrary to Seiler, Mubeen and Qusien (2017) argue that Pakistani TV channels are successful in creating awareness among the general public about minorities" rights and effectively highlight their issues through their objective analysis. In the same vein, Ambreen"s (2014) study on English print media concludes that newspapers such as Daily Dawn, The News, and The Nation give positive coverage to minority issues.
Against the backdrop of such studies, Khan and Rafi (2014) raise an interesting point from another angle. They argue that Pakistani society should not be taken as a monolithic entity. Thus, according to them, Christians of KPK enjoy more peace as compared to other provinces of the country like Punjab. However, the lacuna of this study is that it makes a specific comparative statement about KPK and other provinces of Pakistan like Punjab on the bases of randomly selected individual examples. Although the paper laments some Christian authors for their attempt to disproportionately focus on negative incidents, the study itself does the same when it comes to comparison between KPK and Punjab. While another report (Yousaf, 2016) concludes that the plight of minorities in Pakistan is the same everywhere in the country, it points to the demographic differences and maintains that Punjab is more radicalized than Sindh.

Research Questions
The religious minorities in Pakistan are portrayed as a discriminated-against class facing the challenge of peaceful coexistence. The Christian minority of Pakistan is especially claimed to be alienated and persecuted. The question is if and how far the everyday social interaction between the Christian minority and Muslim majority corroborates such negative perceptions? Secondly, does the thesis of alienation and persecution of Christians in Pakistan equally apply to every part of the country?

Research Methods
In this study, neighborhood interaction is used as an indicator. By neighborhood interaction the researchers mean every day and practical socialization and coexistence of Christians and Muslims in their neighborhood. The study attempts to find out how both the communities perceive each other, how often they visit each other, if they celebrate festivities together, and do they help each other?
A mix method approach (Pennink & Jonker, 2010, pp. 94-96) has been employed in this research. Hence, data were collected through questionnaires, interviews and group discussions. The defined sample size for quantitative analysis was 384 respondents. We used simple random technique and adopted the lottery method for the selection of our respondents (Singh, 2006, pp. 86-87). Out of 384 questionnaires distributed 33 were not returned and 3 questionnaires received were not completely answered. Since, this was a small scale study; therefore the number of questionnaires was reduced to 348 respondents.
Moreover, the qualitative questions which could not be delivered through questionnaires were asked in interviews and group discussions. For qualitative analysis, Semi-structured interviews were held with 10 persons (5 Christians and 5 Muslims) including 6 notable religious scholars. Out of 6 religious scholars, 3 were Christians and 3 Muslims. Apart from the individual interviews, three group discussions (each group consisted of 5 participants) were held only with the Christian respondents who were purposely selected. In group discussions, only those Christian respondents were included who had routine interaction with their Muslim neighbors.
The questionnaire was analyzed by using SPSS Software. The data thus accumulated is then presented below in the form of tables. However, some calculations were also done manually to make the data easier and understandable to common people. The data obtained through interviews and group discussions have been used to triangulate with the quantitative data.

Demographic Data of the Respondents
The first part of the questionnaire consisted of questions such as religious belonging, age, gender, educational level, marital status, profession, duration of stay in the community and monthly income of the responders. As the study was about to inquire about social interaction among Christians and Muslims therefore, the category of religion was divided into two groups, that is Islam (48.9%) and Christianity (51.1%). The age category of the respondents was divided into four groups; 18 to 24 (28.8%), 25 to 30 (23.0%), 31 to 39 (24.7%), 40 and above (23.5%). Gender was categorized into two that are male (77.91%) and female (22.09%). Education level was categorized into seven groups; none (8.4%), Primary (7.5%), Middle (13.6%), Matric (20.8%), Higher Secondary (25.7%), BA (14.5%), Master and above (9.5%). Marital status was divided into three categories, married (56%), single (39.9%) and widowed (2.9%). The profession category of the respondents was divided into five groups; 23.1% of the participants were government workers, 35.4% were private servants, and 12.9% of the participants had their own business. 19.6% were students and 9.06% had no job. 40% of the respondents were staying in their community from 41 years and above. Duration of stay in community was; 20.29% were living in their community from 31-40 years, 16.2% of the respondents were staying from 21-30 years, while 13% were residing between 11-30 years. Monthly income was calculated as 12.9% of the respondents were earning PKR 10000 and below, 31.7% were earning between PKR 11000 and 20000 per month, 18.2% were earning between PKR 21000 and 30000, 5.6% were getting between PKR 31000 and 40000 per month. 3.81% of respondent"s monthly income was between 41000 and 50000, 1.5% were earning PKR 51000 and above.

Neighborhood Interaction
Seven questions were designed for measuring neighborhood interaction between Christian and Muslim communities. The respondents were asked to select a suitable option based on the Likert type scale of one to three. The data is explained below.     On the other hand, Saint Michael Catholic Church"s priest commented: "The Jami'ah's staff neither wish us Christmas nor do they visit us." However, both religious institutes cooperate on different levels as a senior student of the same Jami'ah said; "When the Church staff asks us for something we provide them and we also send them meat on the occasion of Eid-ul-Azha." Another Mufti of Jami'ah said that they had some legal issues to build a student"s hostel in Jami'ah and the Catholic Church priest and staff helped convince the government to allow us. This is a strong indicator of cooperative coexistence between both institutions.   Table 6 shows that 84% of Christians reported that they often attended their Muslim neighbors" funeral ceremonies while 11% of Christians joined a few times and 4.4% never attended any. 72.4% Muslims often attended their Christian neighbors" funeral ceremonies whereas, 23.5% attended sometimes and only 4.1% never attended. Question 7 was only asked from the Christian respondents as they are a minority. Table 7 shows that widely held 95.5% Christians felt safe in their Muslim neighborhood while 4.5% of Christians did not feel safe in the Muslim community.

Discussion of Overall Quantitative Data
To find out the broad picture of Christian-Muslim neighborhood interaction the following quantification and calculation have been done. Interaction in the neighborhood based on the positive responses of both groups is measured separately as well as collectively. Hence, positive neighborhood interaction of Christians with Muslim neighbors was calculated as 71% (Note 4) while positive Muslim interaction with Christian neighbors found was 64%. (Note 5) By merging positive responses of both communities the average percent neighborhood interaction of Christians and Muslims measured was 68%. (Note 6) From the results above it is obvious that the majority of the Muslim and Christian respondents knew their neighbors (Table 1) and were frequently greeting each other (Table 2). They often wished religious festivals to each other but the Muslim response in this regard was below average (Table 3) indicating that they were not frequently wishing Christmas to their Christians neighbors. Regarding visiting each other"s homes, Christians were found to be more active in visiting their Muslim neighbors" homes as compared to Muslims visiting Christian"s homes (Table 4). The majority of both groups claimed that they were invited by their neighbors in their marriage ceremonies (Table 5). The majority of Christians, as well as Muslims, insisted that they often attended their neighbors" funeral ceremony (Table 6). Moreover, the majority of 95.5% of Christians agreed that they were safe among the Muslim community of Peshawar. Further, when we quantified the positive observations of all items the Christian interaction with Muslims was recorded as 71% whereas, positive Muslim interaction with the Christian community was found 64%. The overall quantified cross-religious neighborhood interaction was 68 % which is above average and reveals a positive interaction between both communities.

Discussion of the Qualitative Data
As mentioned above, qualitative data was collected through group discussions and interviews. In the group discussions, the Christian participants were asked the following questions about their social interaction with Muslims.
1. What type of threat, if any, they feel from the Muslim community?
2. Which actions of the Muslim neighbors they like or dislike the most?
3. Do they face any problems from the Muslim community?
Virtually, all the interviewees answered that they had not received any threat nor faced any persecution or attack from the Muslim community. Similarly, nobody from the participants reported specific actions of their Muslim neighbors or coworkers which they disliked. Almost all the participants termed their Muslim neighbors as good and supportive fellows. A Christian Counselor of the Union Council said: "When a Christian has any tussle with any Muslim, Muslim neighbors stand in favor of Christian if Muslim is found guilty. This is the best example of equality of our Muslim neighbors which I like the most." To the third question, all of the participants insisted that they had no problem with the Muslim community. Most of the respondents stated that they had never experienced any big problem from their Muslim neighbors. In addition to this, a closed-ended question was asked solely from the Christian respondents in the questionnaire whether they felt safe in the Muslim neighborhood or not. Table 7 reveals that 95.5% of the respondents claimed that they were safe in their Muslim neighborhoods.
Similar responses appeared during the interviews. For instance, during an interview, a Catholic priest of Saint Michael Church was asked whether he knew about any clash in Peshawar between Christians and Muslims. He replied in these words: "According to my knowledge, no incident has occurred in which a Muslim crowed have attacked or persecuted any Christian in Peshawar." He further added: "The Christians are safe here because the government of KPK gives more protection to minorities as compared to other provinces of Pakistan." Another interviewee, the bishop of KPK narrated an incident which highlights the cordial relations between Muslim and Christian communities in Peshawar: When All Saint Church was attacked by terrorists in September 2013, the surrounding Muslim neighbors sympathetically cooperated with affected Christians. They excavated burial chambers for the deceased and provided food to the affected families continuously for three days. And when a prayer ceremony for martyred was held in Saint John Church they arranged prepared food for the entire congregation.
The Bishop of KPK, made another comment in the following words: "I visit different places of KPK but the Christian community has received neither any threat nor any attack from the Muslim community. The people who attack Christians and Muslims are anti-Pakistan elements. In KPK very few conflicts had occurred among Christians and Muslims but those were remarkably resolved peacefully. Here, Muslims and Christians are socially closer to each other as compared to other provinces." On the other hand, a Muslim Mufti of Jami'ah Ulum-ul-Islamia said: "When the late Maulana Hassan Jaan was martyred by terrorists, we received condolence letters from all the churches of Peshawar." These statements imply that at the neighborhood level both communities have a good social relationship and the Christian minority faces no significant problems from the Muslim community during everyday life in Peshawar city.

Conclusion
The above results lead to the conclusion that all in all Christian-Muslim communities enjoy peaceful coexistence in Peshawar city and their social interaction is positive at the neighborhood level. It has been noted in the beginning that at least two incidents of terrorist attacks against the Christian community happened in Peshawar. However, the matter of fact is that similar terrorist attacks by extremist groups took place against their Muslims neighbors as well. The problem of terrorism is related to several factors, which include, most importantly, the geopolitics of various regional and international stakeholders. This does not necessarily relate to the matter of coexistence and social interaction of the various communal groups in Pakistan.
One possible reason for the general good social bonds between Christians and Muslims in Peshawar city can be related to what Khan and Rafi (2014) claim that "KPK is relatively better [place to live] for the Christian community of Pakistan." Along this line of argument, a possible reason for the negative perception about the Christian minority in Pakistan can be the misplaced focus of media on selected violent incidents of communal violence that took place in particular localities like Gojra and Lahore, and then these images are projected over the whole country. Therefore, we argue that sweeping negative statements about the minority situation in Pakistan need to be circumvented and the fact should be taken into consideration that the results may vary from place to place.
However, to be candid, the study of a particular city alone cannot substantiate the conclusion that its situation regarding the treatment of a certain minority is better or worse than other parts of the country. Such a conclusion can only be drawn based on comparative social scientific studies about different provinces or cities of Pakistan, which according to our knowledge still needs to be undertaken. Though a case study about the Christian minority in Lahore (Chawla, 2018) has been undertaken it does not quantitatively study social interaction between Christians and Muslims the way it has been done in the present study. Thus a comparison between situations of the two cities is not plausible. Therefore, the present study potentially points to the probability that there exists constructive and peaceful social interaction between different religious communities in Pakistan compared to the impression created by the situation reports which are based mostly on media reports and theoretical studies. Hence, we argue that claiming the widespread violence against Christians (Gregory, 2008) and sweeping statements that religious minorities in Pakistan are oppressed and threatened (2011, p. 49) are possibly making a mountain out of a molehill. Such assessments need to be counterchecked by empirical studies of specific localities of the country.
It is, however, not to state that nothing needs to be done regarding the socio-political situation of the minorities, including the Christian minority, in Pakistan. It is noteworthy that the present study has also yielded about 32 % negative social interactions between Christians and Muslims in Peshawar which suggests the existence of some inter-communal problems. Besides, a sizable number of Christians live in a separate neighborhood called Christian Colony, on the outskirts of Peshawar, just like separate Christian neighborhoods exist in many other cities of Pakistan. This fact implies a lack of social integration and a need for improvement in the situation.

Recommendations
We recommend for both Christian and Muslim communities of Pakistan to promote those teachings of their respective religious traditions which could help and support their peaceful and harmonious coexistence in the country. Both Christianity and Islam uphold social and moral values like, justice, human dignity, and rights of neighbors, which are conducive to constructive and durable social interaction between different communities of the society.
Since the majority is always expected to play the leading role in achieving peaceful coexistence in any society, the Muslim community leaders should highlight the teachings of Islam about justice, the sanctity of human life, and the protection of religious minorities through media and the educational system of the country. The imams should speak on the rights of minorities in Islam during their Friday sermons.
It is the constitutional responsibility of the state to protect the life, dignity, and property of all its citizens and ensure equal opportunities for social and economic prosperity for everyone, including the minorities. As a practical measure, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Inter-faith Harmony can play its role by establishing a formal forum for interfaith dialogue to promote mutual understanding among various religious communities of the country. Some problems of the Christian community relate to their priorities. For instance, in one of the interviews during this study a Catholic priest of Saint Michael Church said: "Our Christian fellows earn money and spend it extravagantly instead of spending it on the education of their children. They do not try to improve their social status." So, the Christian community of Pakistan also needs to focus on education and community work to upgrade its economic and societal position in the country.