Shahbaz Bhatti was killed for his faith. His brother, Paul, is telling his story to the West.
Rome — “I was forced to flee the country with my family after a violent attack on my residence by extremists,” said Dr. Paul Bhatti, a surgeon who had to flee his homeland of Pakistan. Speaking to an international conference on religious liberty (titled “Under Caesar’s Sword”) here this month, he said: “One morning, I awoke to find extremists trying to cut the steel security bars on the front windows of my residence. This was unsettling, to say the least.”
He understates it because, in retrospect, it was far from the worst his family would suffer.
Dr. Bhatti decided for the sake of his family and career to move to Italy, disappointing his brother, Shahbaz. Paul wanted Shahbaz to leave too; Shahbaz wanted Paul to return. “He was trying to convince me to return to Pakistan because of the dire and pressing needs of the community, while I was arguing with him that he should move to Europe because his very life was in danger. Shahbaz was no stranger to death threats by men who despised his religion and his work on behalf of the helpless. Looking back, I realize I was arguing from a rational and human perspective with a man whose gaze was fixed on Heaven.” Paul was begging Shahbaz to leave Pakistan, but he was insistent on staying and doing what he could to helping others. One friend recalls a young girl who was raped, whom no one else would help because she came from a Christian family.
Shahbaz Bhatti stayed, explaining that, as Paul recounted, “he had surrendered his life into Jesus’ hands and would follow Jesus until his last breath.” During their last conversation, in which Shahbaz urged his brother to come home, Paul replied, “You are calling me to leave paradise for hell.” Shahbaz insisted: “The road leading to paradise starts in Pakistan.”
Shahbaz was murdered in March 2011, while serving as minister for minority affairs. “His determination to stop all kinds of injustices and to protect the oppressed and marginalized communities cost him his life,” his brother explains.
Paul’s reaction was the natural one. “The news of Shahbaz’s murder shook me to the core. I was devastated, disheartened, and furious all at the same time. I immediately flew to Pakistan to attend my brother’s funeral. My intention was to retrieve members of my family and move them to safety in Italy and Canada, and say farewell to Pakistan forever. My conviction, at that moment, was that Pakistan was unworthy of the services of my family.”
But in Islamabad, he found an ecumenical coalition rallying to his brother’s fight for peace and the protection of minority rights. “I found a heartrending situation,” Paul says. “There was a sea of people in attendance at his funeral, from all walks of life — politicians and diplomats, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu religious leaders, all desperately crying for Shahbaz, all crying, ‘Who will take his call for love?’” In the Bhattis’ native village, “a throng of young and old people overwhelmed me, crying and sobbing; they had lost their champion for freedom! It was impossible to console them. They were brokenhearted, struck with grief in the loss of Shahbaz. He was like a father to them; and they were now orphaned.”
“I was astounded by the lasting power of his sacrificial love, now living in the hearts of the people,” Paul says. “I know that, in reality, it was the love of God.”
And something “remarkable” happened when he had that realization. He went to tell his mother — who had heard the bullets fired that killed her son — fearing he would be exacerbating her suffering by doing so. But what he encountered was her complete agreement. And a witness of forgiveness. “She wasn’t angry with Shahbaz’s killers, and she was free from a desire for revenge or retaliation against them. She explained that she had forgiven the killers of my brother. Later, she reminded me that Shahbaz’s way of life was rooted in forgiveness and love, following the Way of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
At the Rome conference, we saw this same reaction from families of the Coptic Christians who were beheaded by ISIS earlier this year: forgiveness and a deep concern for the souls of those who would do such a thing.
#share#Paul Bhatti took over his brother’s ministry, despite his anger that the government couldn’t manage to protect Shahbaz. “But in this chaotic and intense moment something began to change in my heart. I began remembering about Shahbaz from his early childhood until his death. I kept seeing his face, filled with love, forgiveness, and acceptance, in front of me. It was transformative. There was a palpable sense of the love of God strengthening him through the difficult phases of his struggles, especially the battle with an ideology wanting to impose hatred, division, and discrimination in my country, Pakistan. That same love of God began to strengthen me.” Paul ultimately “began to see [Shahbaz’s] murderers through the eyes of forgiveness,” and as he did, his “resentment” against the Pakistani government ebbed too. He realized “that though it appears contradictory, forgiveness and love were possibly the ultimate weapons of revenge.”
There are a lot of reasons in the world today for righteous anger, and we see rage and despair in the news headlines and the campaign rallies and live footage from the latest hotspot, sometimes as if it were part of the primetime lineup.
#related#We can choose to add to it, or we can take the road less traveled by, as Robert Frost put it. Paul Bhatti points to these words of Jesus Christ from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7: 13–14): “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
“I believe in Jesus Christ, who has given his own life for us. I know what is the meaning of the cross, and I am following the cross, and I am ready to die for a cause,” Shahbaz Bhatti once said when asked about the threats on his life. His cause was “my community and suffering people” — the persecuted whom so many of us have the luxury of forgetting. A resolution to take the narrow path, for the sake of those who suffer far away and near by, would be a better way than anger, despair, or indifference. And for those among us who try to follow the Sermon on the Mount, it is, as the Bhatti family knows, the only authentic way.