Shahbaz Bhatti’s Sister-in-Law Lives In Fear of Muslim Extremists

This year marks the 15th anniversary of the martyrdom of Servant of God Clement Shahbaz Bhatti, the Pakistani Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs who was assassinated by the Pakistani Taliban because of his opposition to his country’s blasphemy laws. Labeled a blasphemer by the Taliban, Bhatti had publicly spoken on behalf of persecuted Pakistani Christians, including the notorious Asia Bibi, who in 2010 had been sentenced to death in a Pakistani court, also over charges of blasphemy (she was acquitted in 2018 and subsequently moved to Canada).

Bhatti’s cause for canonization was opened in 2016, but for his extended family, the trials of religious persecution continue. One of Bhatti’s brothers, Sikander, was also an advocate for persecuted Christians in Pakistan, organizing events on behalf of marginalized religious minorities and demanding that the perpetrators of Bhatti’s assassination be brought to justice, for which Sikander regularly received death threats. Sikander was even offered an opportunity to claim asylum in Canada, but he refused, insisting on continuing the struggle for persecuted Christians. Unfortunately, in 2021 Sikander died of liver cancer, leaving behind a wife, Nazia Parveen, and three children: a daughter, Isra Misal, and two sons, Huraib and Shahbaz Bhatti.

Sikander’s death placed his widow and children in a precarious situation, given there was no adult male in their home. “We were left alone at the mercy of God,” relates Parveen. In October 2022, she received a phone call from an unknown number; the man demanded that the family become Muslim and her daughter marry a Muslim. Shortly thereafter, Parveen discovered that her religious faith had been changed from Christian to Muslim in a national registry, something that required a court petition to change. Upon learning that Parveen had done this, members of an extremist Muslim group came to her village in search of the family.

Due to this increased attention, Parveen took her children to live in hiding with relatives. She applied for a Canadian visitor visa, but the request was refused. She moved again to the Pakistani city of Hyderabad to stay with her brother-in-law Gerard Bhatti (another brother of Shahbaz), though in 2023 Gerard received an anonymous phone call, once more threatening to forcibly marry Parveen and her daughter to Muslims.

Understanding the unwelcome attention her presence directed toward Gerard, Parveen and her family soon departed and appealed to Pakistani police for protection. The police exhorted the family to convert to Islam, warning them that extremists would undoubtedly continue to chase them and would, in time, kill them as they had killed Shahbaz. Indeed, the police noted, the extremists obviously had connections within the government, since they had been able to persuade someone in power to change her registered religion from Christianity to Islam.

Terrified, Parveen sought guidance from family and Catholic clergy. All of them agreed: the situation for her and her children in Pakistan had become untenable. Her familial connection to some of the most outspoken opponents of religious extremism and persecution of Christians in Pakistan had effectively placed a target on the backs of her and her children. Everyone urged her to find some way to leave the country and seek asylum elsewhere.

Thus, Parveen procured a visa for another country in Asia and purchased plane tickets. (I am withholding the name of the country for their safety.) After arriving there in November 2024, the family declared themselves asylum seekers to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), an international organization that is able to designate asylum seekers as refugees so that they can eventually be placed in a third-country. Since then, the family’s visas have expired, and they now live there illegally, which means the children cannot attend school or receive medical treatment for fear of being discovered. Parveen has also applied for asylum in Canada, where she has extended family, including another brother of Shahbaz, Peter Bhatti, who is also a prominent advocate on behalf of persecuted Christians, serving as founder and chairman of the Toronto-based charity International Christian Voice (ICV).

Peter Bhatti sent along all the documents related to Parveen’s story and her current application with the UNHCR. As someone who has spent more than a decade advocating on behalf of persecuted Christian minorities, particularly those in Pakistan, I am sadly very familiar with this story. For years I advocated on behalf of Pakistani Christian families who had fled to Thailand, and elsewhere, hoping to be designated as refugees so they could start a new life in Europe or North America, something I have recounted in my book The Persecuted.

It’s amazing to consider the similarities of these stories of persecuted Pakistani Christians. Every time, Muslim extremists falsely accuse a family member of having committed blasphemy against the Koran or Allah. They demand the family convert or the women will be abducted, forcibly converted, and married off to Muslim men. And then there is the violence: beatings, burning of property, shootings. My friend Michael D’Souza was once beaten almost to death by Muslim extremists in Karachi. (After a long, arduous, incredible story, he and his family now live safely in Canada). Who would want to remain in their home country under such circumstances?

When Peter Bhatti told me about Parveen’s story, I was incredulous. Surely if someone directly related to the great martyr Shahbaz Bhatti—whose story was recently told in an excellent new graphic novel—is suffering persecution, that family connection should be enough to attract sufficient attention to get that person out of harm’s way. But to my knowledge, there is no media coverage of this terrible if all-too-familiar story of Catholic suffering.

Though the Pakistani Catholic families for whom I advocated in my book and many articles here at Crisis and elsewhere have been resettled in Canada and the Netherlands, praise be to God, there are many other Pakistani Catholics who live in quiet misery. Their stories must continue to be told. And, as I’ve gratefully learned, there remains genuine hope that their trials may come to an end. Please pray for Parveen and her family—that they, too, like my friends the D’Souza’s, may one day start their lives afresh in a land where they can worship God and practice the Catholic Faith in peace. As Nazia Parveen herself says: “We request you to please consider the threats to our lives and give us protection.”