Mourning Pakistanis Bury Assassinated Christian Official

Thousands of mourners crowded into an Islamabad church today to pay their final respects to Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan's only Christian government minister, who was assassinated for opposing the country's harsh blasphemy laws.

Bhatti, a 42-year-old Roman Catholic, is the second senior politician to be gunned down in two months over the controversial legislation, which imposes the death penalty for insulting Islam. The governor of the country's populous Punjab province, Salman Taseer, was shot dead Jan. 4 by one of his bodyguards, who was angered by the politician's opposition to the law.

Taseer and Bhatti began criticizing the legislation after a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, was sentenced to death in November for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad during a row with Muslim villagers. They argued that the blasphemy law, which was originally introduced to preserve interfaith harmony, was now being used to persecute the country's minorities.

Although no one has been executed under the blasphemy law, more than 30 accused have been killed by lynch mobs.

During the church service in Islamabad, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani praised a man many have described as kind, humble and committed to helping Pakistan's oppressed religious minorities. "People like him, they are very rare," Gilani told the mourners, according to The Associated Press. "All the minorities have lost a great leader. I assure you, we will try our utmost to bring the culprits to justice."

But many Pakistani Christians -- who make up an estimated 1.5 percent of Pakistan's 185 million population -- doubt the government's commitment to tracking down the Islamists behind the ambush and murder. The ruling Pakistan Peoples Party failed to support Bhatti and Taseer when they spoke out against the sentencing of Bibi, apparently for fear of provoking extremists. And they failed to respond to a U.S. State Department request to provide Bhatti with an armored car, despite the fact that the former minorities minister had received numerous death threats, The New York Times reported.

Those threats became reality Wednesday morning, when several gunmen surrounded Bhatti's car in Islamabad. They pulled his driver and niece from the vehicle, and then shot the politician at least eight times. The attackers dropped leaflets at the scene, saying the murder was carried out in the name of the Punjabi Taliban and al-Qaida. "In Islamic Shariah, the sentence for blasphemers to the prophet is just death," the pamphlet said, according to Reuters.

The politician was traveling without bodyguards because he had lost trust in government-provided security details following Taseer's assassination, Bhatti's brother-in-law, Yousuf Nishan, told Pakistan's Express Tribune. Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters that the government couldn't be blamed for the death since Bhatti had chosen to dump his guards. "I think it was his mistake," Malik said. "It was his own decision."

After today's ceremony in Islamabad, Bhatti's body was flown by helicopter to Khushpur, a Christian-majority village in eastern Punjab province. Some 1,500 people met the coffin, according to the AP, and many shouted, "Bhatti, your blood will bring a revolution!"

Also today, an explosion ripped through a mosque in northwest Pakistan, killing at least 10 people and injuring 29, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan. The bomb detonated as locals were collecting free food at a shrine attached to the mosque. Although no group claimed responsibility, suspicion is likely to fall on adherents of the radical Wahhabi strain of Islam. Militant Wahhabists have carried out numerous attacks on followers of Pakistan's more traditional and spiritual form of Sufi Islam in recent years.