While the post-Osama world continues to buzz with news of the hunting down of the Al Qaeda leader, Church and Christian groups are keeping a low profile across Pakistan.

Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's main religious party, called for protests today against the US raid and branded government and intelligence agencies incompetent.

"Institutions in the vicinity of Church buildings were closed as caution," said Yousaf Masih Yaad, a Christian scholar and analyst in Peshawar, neighboring Afghanistan.

"The threat of bombing has increased in the city which is already rocked to the extreme by Taliban," he said.

Six Christians have died in suicide blasts in this capital city of the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

"Terrorism has affected Christians as well as Muslims. We have not shown interest in the bin Laden killing as it would enrage the militants," said the diocesan council member of the Church of Pakistan.

The Church in the country has not commented on the raid.

"Condemning a terrorist, who posed as an Islamic hero, can invite trouble for our community," said Khalid Gill, chief organizer of All Pakistan Minority Alliance. "The fight against religious extremism has been our core struggle but we stand with our agencies and government in defence of the sovereignty of the country."

The Christian political party lost its patron, Shahbaz Bhatti, a former Catholic federal minister for minorities, when he was murdered on March 2 in Islamabad. "Taliban al-Qaida Punjab"claimed responsibility for the assassination.

Despite the heightened tensions this week, security fears are nothing new to the country's Christians. The Christian majority Amritnagar village of Punjab province has been organizing "self help" night security details for a decade, an initiative which the locals started after the country was plunged into the "war on terror".

"Every house contributes 30 rupees (US$0.35) a month for the stipend of 12 men who keep watch with axes and guns. It has helped to avert any attack by fundamentalists as well as combat theft in the area," Mehran Khan, the village headman, told ucanews.com.

"People are cautious about discussing bin Laden in public. Though inwardly jubilant, they cannot condemn him in Muslim company," he said.

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• ucanews.com Reprinted with permission
• Image: Asia Society

"9/11 happened before my students were even born," she said. "It makes it hard to truly tell them in an appropriate way what is going on."

Yarzabek teaches 22 six-year-olds from various backgrounds. Her class includes English language learners, including Spanish-speaker Alejandro, who told Yarzabek that bin Laden should have been imprisoned, rather than killed. It also included Adwaith, of India, who understood exactly what was going on.

How was she supposed to handle the situation?

As pundits, national security experts and news outlets try to analyze the ramifications of bin Laden's death, teachers across the country face the challenge of teaching a dramatic event in real time. Under pressure of Advanced Placement exams and state tests, they are curtailing their curricula to address the news of the day — a story they simply couldn't ignore.

This set of circumstances puts the teacher in a critical role, said Margaret Berci, an expert in K-12 Social Studies who works in the education department at the College of Staten Island. "One of the major challenges is to make sure we do not indoctrinate," she said.

Yarzabek said she wanted to wait a day before discussing the news in class. She wanted to give parents time to present it to their children in their own way, and to give herself time to process it. "More of my kids will come in tomorrow with questions," she said. "They're not just babies — they're curious about everything."

She remembered being ushered from her high school psychology class into a prayer service held by her Catholic school when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

"I think about the intense emotion I felt then," she said. "I not only want to teach the event, but tap into their emotions."

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