A court in Faisalabad, Pakistan, sentenced a man to ten years in prison this week for using a crane to demolish three churches during an especially large mob violence incident in 2023 in which thousands of Muslim men looted, vandalized, and demolished a Christian community.
The man convicted, Irfan Yousaf, is reportedly the only person facing justice, though estimates at the time suggested that as many as 10,000 Muslims participated in the violence. Christian groups celebrated the rare conviction and sentence in Pakistan, a country where insulting Muhammad could lead to the death penalty, but lamented that the conviction of one person fell very short of true justice for the thousands of Christians who had their homes and lives destroyed by the incident.
Yousaf was reportedly convicted on charges of desecration and arson. A crane operator, he was convicted of using the equipment to demolish three churches in Jaranwala, where the mob attacks occurred: the Salvation Army Church, the Peace Mission Church, and the Pak Khushkhabri Church. Homes near the church were also looted and destroyed, displacing the local Christians.
Speaking to the Catholic news network EWTN, Samuel Pyara, the chairman of the Implementation Minority Rights Forum (IMRF), explained that Yousaf was convicted because he was essentially filmed destroying the churches, what Pakistani courts refer to as “digital forensic evidence.”
“It followed forensic analysis of a video recorded by Wahida Mukhtar, a local Christian woman, showing Yousaf demolishing a church and an adjacent house with a crane. Government-certified experts authenticated the footage and testified before the court,” Pyara was quoted as saying. Mukhtar reportedly continued recording the incident even while members of the mob threw bricks at her, fracturing a bone in her left foot. For her contribution to justice, she also faced intimidation at work and threats from local Muslims.
Reports about the trial noted the judge in case used his verdict in part to condemn the police for its poor response to the riots, finding that Yousaf was the only person for whom there was enough evidence to build a case. Reports both from 2023 and years later indicated that police largely stood aside while Muslim men burned, looted, and otherwise destroyed Christian communities; law enforcement authorities also reportedly did little to preserve evidence against those involved.
Pakistan has faced routine Islamic mob violence against Christians for decades, often sparked by spurious accusations of “blasphemy” against the Christian victims. The accusations — sometimes raised by Muslims with personal, unrelated disputes with the Christians targeted — spread rapidly as the accusers use mosque speakerphone announcements to urge Muslim men to take up arms and attack Christians who have allegedly spoken ill of Allah and Mohammed, desecrated a Quran, or committed other “blasphemy” actions. Blasphemy is illegal in Pakistan and its government regularly uses international platforms such as the United Nations to call for the implementation of a global ban against “Islamophobia” and “blasphemy.” The Pakistani government rarely processes alleged blasphemy “criminals,” however, as mobs often beat and kill them.
In the Jaranwala incident in August 2023, a pair of Christian brothers were accused of desecrating a Quran, an allegation that Pakistani police later found no evidence to back and attributed to a personal dispute with the accusing Muslims. The newspaper reported that the Islamic extremist party Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) got involved, amplifying calls for mob violence and exacerbating the chaos.
TLP has since been banned in the country and a church official, speaking anonymously to EWTN this week, explained, “The crane was the election symbol of the now-banned Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan TLP, whose supporters were widely accused of leading the violence. Convicting the crane driver carries symbolic significance for many Christians.”
Local Muslims used mosque announcements to loudly demand that Muslim men express their displeasure against the alleged blasphemy, resulting in a mob estimated to have totaled up to 10,000 men destroying the Christian communities of Jaranwala. Estimates by humanitarian groups at the time suggested that the mobs destroyed over 500 homes and left tens of thousands of Christians homeless. Another 25 places of worship were destroyed, either with cranes as in the case of Yousaf’s targets or burned down. Christians testifying to local media at the time described police standing around doing nothing to stop the mob, while some local Muslims attempted to help protect Christian families by hastily pinning Quranic verses to their front doors, but they were outnumbered by the Islamic mob.
“Christian leaders strongly condemned what they called police inaction during the whole episode,” the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported at the time. “They alleged that police played the role of silent spectators when Christian families were crying for help, and delayed their response until the residents were forced to abandon their houses, leaving them at the mercy of the attackers.”
Two years later, Dawn reported that police had received accusations against 5,200 people identified as being part of the mob, but arrested only 381 of them. Of those, 380 were released, and Yousaf convicted this week.
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