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Within two days, both of the youth's kidneys were failing, and local doctors ordered him transferred to Faisalabad's Allied Hospital. Despite repeated dialysis treatments and intensive care, he died on May 2, 11 days after he was hospitalized.

According to an April 30 report in Dawn newspaper, the madrasseh's principal told a district official that Anjum was a drug addict, and that he had confessed to stealing in order to buy his narcotics.

When an investigative team from Lahore's Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement visited the Toba Tek Singh police station the day after Anjum's death, head constable Mohammad Anwar ul-Haq declared that the accused attackers "had not beaten him with the intention to kill him."

Since Anjum had gone to the madrasseh "intentionally with the motive of theft" and the madrasseh staff had caught him in the act, the constable reasoned, "It was God's will that he had to die this way."

"This whole atmosphere of intolerance [against non-Muslims] is being created by the curriculum," a Christian cleric who attended Anjum's funeral told Compass. "We've just made a study on the latest books issued by the government, and they are more Islamist, more fanatical, than before."

For the past two years, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has declared that Islamic schools fomenting divisive "sectarian" teachings would be forced to revise their courses or face closure.

Yesterday Religious Affairs Minister Mohammed Ejaz ul-Haq declared at a madrasseh ceremony in Taxila that "Western propaganda against madrassehs is baseless and it must be countered." Quoted in Monday's Daily Times newspaper, ul-Haq claimed that the "erroneous" textbooks accused of promoting intolerance and violence among madrasseh students had been removed from the market, and that those who prepared them would be tried and punished.

The Daily Times of Pakistan reports on the Commission for Peace and Human Development's response to Anjum's death.

The Pakistan Tribune has the response from the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance.

AsiaNews.it, a Roman Catholic news site, also has coverage of Anjum's death.

More articles on Pakistan, including one on what you can do to help persecuted Christians in that country, are available in our World Report area.

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May (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48