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DEMONSTRATORS CARRY POSTERS OF SUSPENDED CHIEF JUSTICE CHAUDHRY AS THEY CHANT ANTI-MUSHARRAF SLOGANS DURING A RALLY IN KARACHI

In Karachi a pastor and his wife fled the city after rioters killed 49 people in one day. Another pastor in the port city, Pakistan's largest, was poisoned, reportedly by a man pretending to be a new convert to Christianity, who dumped him on a roadside for dead (he survived).

At the other end of the country, in the North-West Frontier Province town of Charsadda, Taliban-linked Islamic leaders issued to local Christians threats of bombings and killings if they do not convert to Islam or leave. In nearby Peshawar a young Pakistani Christian was kidnapped, driven 400 miles and held for 10 days, then suddenly released.

And that was just May.

Pakistan, ruled more often than not by the military in its 60-year history, is losing its law-and-order grip on its 165 million mostly Muslim citizens. Islamist leaders together with Taliban exiles from Afghanistan are forcing the government of President Pervez Musharraf to give ground, not only on protections against minorities but in overall internal security, in ways eyewitnesses say they never before have seen.