Reviving an Interfaith Legacy - NYTimes.com Karachi, Pakistan - Pakistan's flag, a white star and crescent on a green background taken from the flag of the Muslim League, also has a broad white stripe on the left to represent its minority faiths, which include Christians, Hindus, Zoroastrians and others. But for many, a growing trend of violent attacks by religious militants against these groups has made that white stripe begin to feel like a tightrope - or a noose. The most egregious of these attacks (not that any of them are less than egregious) took place in September, when two suicide bombers detonated their jackets at the gates of the All Saints Church in Peshawar, killing at least 80 worshipers, most of them women and children, as they streamed out the doors after Mass. After the attack, a young lawyer from Karachi, Mohammad Jibran Nasir, called on citizens in his city to form a human chain around St. Patrick's Cathedral there during Mass the following Sunday. A Sunni mullah, a Shiite imam and a Catholic priest prayed together during that event, and it was replicated at St. Anthony's Church in Lahore and Our Lady of Fatima Church in Islamabad. Clerics from different faiths and sects sat together in the pews and made heartfelt speeches about religious tolerance while a small but passionate group of citizens held up placards that read, "One Nation, One Blood." In another smart move, the interfaith campaign, called "Pakistan for All," is being enacted on social media. There it has attracted the attention of moderate and progressive Pakistanis, educated and tech-savvy, who detest seeing their country plunge into violence motivated by Pakistan's right wing, and are desperate to wrest back their country from the forces of religious intolerance. But Mr. Nasir recognizes that the work ahead for his burgeoning movement is immense. "We have a long way to go," he said. The human shields around the churches are just a symbolic gesture to get people's attention. What's needed after people have been awakened, he says, is a public discourse that will produce policy recommendations to Pakistan's Parliament for legal reform and heightened punishment for terrorism committed in the name of religion. Pakistan's minorities have always coexisted with the majority in a delicate balance, maintaining dignity despite institutionalized bigotry and societal prejudice. But Pakistanis are now being forced to confront their own responsibility for those whom the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, called upon them to protect. According to Akbar S. Ahmed, a professor of Islamic studies at American University in Washington, D.C., Jinnah practiced the interfaith harmony that he preached. Not only was his wife, Ruttie Jinnah, a woman from the Zoroastrian community, but he also spent Christmas Eve of 1947 attending Mass with the Christian community in its church in Karachi. In the tense months surrounding India's partition, he declared his willingness to take on the role of protector general of the Hindu community. During his lifetime, those highly visible acts and statements assured the minorities of their protection from friends in high places. After he died, however, Pakistan's leaders, influenced by the religious right, began erasing Jinnah's interfaith credentials from the record. They deliberately censored his famous 1947 speech to the Constituent Assembly, which founded the nation, in which he said: "You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the state. Jinnah swilled whiskey and was a heavy smoker, wore Western-style suits and was an avid dog owner. But after he succumbed to lung disease a year after independence, he was painted over as a great Islamic leader who had sacrificed his life in order to create a Muslim nation, for Muslims. Next, Pakistan's leaders sowed the seeds of ignorance about Jinnah's interfaith legacy for future generations by distorting history in Pakistan's textbooks. History courses emphasized the greatness of Muslim conquerors in the region, left out Pakistan's pre-Islamic history, and either remained silent on other religions or demonized their adherents as unbelievers. Social studies textbooks sang the praises of an Islamic republic with Shariah as its code of law, falsely presenting it as Jinnah's vision for the country. A result is a young society steeped in ignorance about non-Muslims and minority Muslim sects, even though it lives in a region that is home to many millions of Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs. The influence of extremist anti-minority ideology remains strong; a Lahore school was recently banned from teaching a class on comparative religion, and its textbooks and other materials were confiscated by the Lahore High Court. Efforts like those of the Center for Dialogue and Action at Forman Christian College in Lahore, which will offer Pakistan's first interfaith curriculum, are an attempt to reverse this and educate a new generation of Pakistanis. Elected officials from Pakistan's major parties attended the human-chain event in Karachi, Pakistan's commercial center and largest city, but not those in Lahore, the capital of the province of Punjab, or Islamabad, the nation's capital. To gain the government's attention, Mr. Nasir says, the campaign will have to make more noise and "make the government uncomfortable." Pakistan's leaders need to rediscover their moral compass and back Pakistan's religious minorities. But for now, it's ordinary Pakistanis who are finding the courage to loosen their nooses. Bina Shah is a columnist and the author of several novels, including "Slum Child," and short-story collections.