A minister whose mother and 19 other family members were murdered by terrorists a decade ago has told of how he was able to resist revenge.

Rev Aftab Gohar says he found peace through Jesus Christ after a double suicide bomber attack at All Saints Church in Peshawar, Pakistan on September 22 2013.

There were 122 people killed and 250 injured in the bombings.

The parishioners had just left the church for a meal in the grounds when the bombers struck.

Among them was Mr Gohar’s 79-year-old mother, Iqbal Gohar, as well as his nieces, nephews, cousins, uncles, aunts and friends.

The minister, who oversees Eddleston, Peebles Old Parish, and Stobo and Drumelzier churches in the Scottish Borders, said his relatives “died for their faith”.

Although Pakistan’s official religion is Islam, the country’s constitution gives citizens freedom of faith.

However, religious minorities are often attacked and the country’s blasphemy laws have been used to discriminate against non-Muslims.

Mr Gohar believes the law is used as a means to justify attacks, such as a number of church and house burnings in Jaranwala near Faisalabad, Pakistan, last month.

Open Doors, a charity that supports persecuted Christians around the world, ranked Pakistan in seventh place in its top 50 countries where Christian persecution is most rife.

Reflecting on the attack, Mr Gohar said: “It was a very hard time for us all and I was questioning ‘why did it happen to those who were very regular churchgoers?’

“Those who didn’t go to church on that day, did they do the right thing?

“The Bible says ‘when you are persecuted because of your faith in Jesus, you are blessed’. They all died for their faith.

“It was hard for me to forgive those responsible but with the strength of God I did so and freed myself from the extra burden of hatred and revenge.”

He added: “On the cross, Jesus prayed for those who were crucifying him: ‘Forgive them Father, they don’t know what they are doing’.

“Jesus said, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ – a lesson that some people find impossible to follow.”

Last week Mr Gohar and a number of campaigners handed a petition to Syed Zahid Raza, consul general of Pakistan for Scotland and Northern Ireland, at the Consulate of Pakistan in Glasgow.

The petition called on Pakistan’s government to improve safety for religious minorities, and for the blasphemy law to include punishing those who destroy Bibles or burn down churches and homes.

Mr Gohar says he was inspired by Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch watchmaker who helped Jewish people escape the Nazis during the Holocaust.

The minister commented: “She said ‘forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuff of hatred’.

“It is a power that breaks chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.”

The minister was ordained into the Church of Pakistan in 1995, having come to Scotland to study at the University of Edinburgh in 1998-1999.

He later came back to Scotland to work as a full-time minister in 2008.

Mr Gohar and his wife Samina and their two adult sons, Shahan and Zeeshan, are now British citizens.

Shahan married in Pakistan last year.

Mr Gohar says the loss of his family was felt strongly at the wedding.

Rt Rev Sally Foster-Fulton, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, said: “Our thoughts and prayers are with our brothers and sisters in Christ in Pakistan as they mark the anniversary of this horrific and unjustified attack on peaceful churchgoers.

“We are united in sorrow as we reflect on the impact this atrocity had on the families of the victims and survivors and sadly Christians continue to be persecuted today.”

She added: “The Church continues to engage with ecumenical and international partners on the misuse of the blasphemy law and we call on the government of Pakistan to redouble its efforts to protect minority groups.”

The Consulate of Pakistan in Glasgow was contacted for comment.

Christians in Baghdad celebrated Christmas on Sunday in a heightened state of fear after deadly attacks on Christian-owned shops that sell alcohol.

Two shops next door to each other were riddled with bullet holes and spattered with blood after gunmen opened fire late on Friday in Baghdad’s Ghadeer neighbourhood. Police and medical sources said three people were killed and four wounded.

Local activists gave a higher death toll. Rayan al-Kildani, commander of Babiliyon Brigades, a group of Christian volunteers formed to fight Islamic State militants, said eight Christians and one member of the Yazidi sect had been killed in the attack.

“What a bloody gift they gave us for Christmas,” Joseph Warda, a Christian human rights activist, told Reuters.

Maria Polos, a retired schoolteacher in the district where the attack took place, said she and other Christians were afraid to celebrate the holiday in public.

“We fear getting killed like those in the alcohol shops,” she said. “We feel we’re aliens in this country.”

The sale of alcohol is generally shunned among Iraq’s Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims, and Christian-run shops that sell it were frequently targeted by militants from both Muslim sects during Iraq’s years of sectarian civil war.

This year, government forces have been pushing fighters from the militant group Islamic State out of parts of northern Iraq where it had banned the practice of any religion apart from Sunni Islam.

Areas once held by the group have seen their first Christmas services since 2013, and many Christians there have sounded more hopeful than they have for years about the fate of communities that date back to biblical times.

In Baghdad, the capital which is firmly controlled by the Iraqi government and security forces dominated by Iraq’s Shi’ite majority, Christians celebrate Christmas in churches decorated for the holiday. But many say they still live in fear, and do not feel the authorities protect them adequately.

Although the identities of the attackers who struck the liquor store were not known, the area is predominantly Shi’ite and Shi’ite groups have firm control of security. Warda, the human rights activist, said militants from any sect that attacked civilians in the name of religion were “no better than Islamic State”.

Vian Dakhil, a lawmaker from the ancient Yazidi sect, whose members were targeted in northern Iraq by Islamic State for what Western countries described as genocide, also said one Yazidi and eight Christians were killed in the Baghdad attacks.

“The criminals should be brought to justice as soon as possible so that their punishment serves as an example to those who dare kill civilians in the name of religion,” Dakhil said on her Twitter page.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for an attack on a traffic police post outside Moscow on Wednesday in which both attackers were killed, calling it revenge for Russia’s aerial bombing campaign in Syria.

The militant group made the claim via the Amaq news agency, which it regularly uses to issue statements, and released a video in which the purported attackers said they wanted to take revenge for Russia killing Muslims in the Middle East.

Russia has been bombing militants in Syria since September last year, part of a military campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

Islamic State called on its members to carry out jihad or holy war in Russia in a YouTube video last month, after which the Kremlin said such threats would not affect its fight against international terrorism.

“We have taken the path of jihad on the orders of our Amir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” one of the purported attackers said on the video released by Amaq, speaking in a mix of Arabic and Russian.

The video named the attackers as Uthman Mardalov and Salim Israilov.

“We have called this operation ‘revenge operation’. Revenge for you bombing our brothers, because you kill our brothers every day in Syria and Iraq. … This will be the start of everything that will come to you.”

Russian investigators said on Wednesday that two unidentified people armed with a firearm and two axes had attacked a traffic police post outside Moscow.

One of them was shot dead while attacking the post, while the other was killed when he tried to put up armed resistance, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.

Two police officers were wounded in the attack, one seriously.

The murder of a 60 year old U.S. citizen on the streets of London is another indicator of how mental health issues are increasingly found to be at the heart of frenzied attacks.

However, it is important to clarify and note that the vast and overwhelming majority of individuals who suffer mental health issues are not and will never be a threat to anyone. If anything, some will be a threat to themselves and people suffering mental heath issues should not be viewed through the prism of being potentially violent or dangerous. Furthermore, there are varying degrees of mental health issues from anxiety through to more long term and more complex issues such as schizophrenia.

Yet, what is important to state is that mental health service provision has become more shambolic since the huge cuts in public services. Waiting times for treatment have increased and with little or no support for people with mental health issues and there is less resource for voluntary sector organisations to step in to support the most vulnerable in society. Also, NHS mental health services are stretched to the bone.

This means that police services are having to keep people with mental health problems overnight in cells since they have nowhere to refer the individual who may have been arrested because of their erratic behaviour or for minor criminality.

INVESTMENT

It is essential that mental health services remain one of the key areas where investment takes place. It seems patently obvious, though needs to be said. If the mind is sick, it does not matter how fit the body is, sooner or later, the very being of the person will be affected and that is a danger to them and in a very small number of cases, a danger to others.

Our thoughts are with the family of the deceased and injured and if readers can get down to Russell Square, place some flowers nearby in honour of the woman who now remains in our hearts as a Londoner we will remember.