Popular accounts of present-day Pakistan often present Muslims there as uniformly intractable and intolerant, and Muslim-Christian relationships as uniformly hostile. All is seen through the lens of the Taliban.
This is a distortion. The history of Jesuit involvement in Pakistan suggests a more complex picture, reflecting the diversity among Muslims there.
Jesuit involvement in the region goes back to the 16th century when the Mughal Emperor Akbar invited Jesuits to engage in religious debates. This set the tone for later engagement.
In 1961, a Swiss Jesuit, Fr Robert Butler, came to Lahore where he gathered important books on Islam written in the Islamic languages (Arabic, Persian and Urdu) as well as books and international journals on Islam and Christianity written in various European languages. The library in Lahore became a basis for scholarly contacts between Fr Butler and various Muslim intellectuals throughout the following decades.
After Fr Butler left there was less opportunity for scholarly dialogue with Muslims. A new approach had to be found. It lay in the development of personal relationships, which is the foundation of all dialogue.
The Jesuits opened two schools for the Urdu and Punjabi-speaking people of Lahore. About 40 per cent of the children who attend these schools are from Muslim families. Some of the teachers are also Muslims.
By interacting on a daily basis, Christians and Muslims, whether they are teachers or students, are learning how to respect and care for one another. The everyday contact that students enjoyed as Christian and Muslim playing and studying together, and the respectful interaction of their Christian and Muslim teachers forms a good basis for subsequent relationships. The history of Islam in Pakistan supports this open and tolerant attitude.
The Muslims of Pakistan today are by nature moderate and respectful of varieties in religious interpretation and practice because they have adopted the form of Islam that the holy men and women (Sufis) had preached to them many centuries ago.
These wandering Sufis had taught them the spiritual depth of the Islamic faith and had provided them with a living example of the beauty and simplicity of their faith. Consequently, the great majority of contemporary Muslims in Pakistan reject the interpretation of Islam that the Taliban are trying to impose upon them.
One can only understand the rise of the Taliban, however, if one remembers the history of their