On March 2, militants gunned down Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s only Christian cabinet minister. They left a leaflet signed by al Qaeda and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Punjab warning that the “targeted killings” would continue until “the infidels and the Satan are eliminated.” Bhatti had long opposed Pakistan’s blasphemy law that makes insulting Islam a capital offense, and which some Pakistani officials use to persecute minority faiths.

The attack came only two months after the assassination of Punjab’s governor Salman Taseer, who had sought reform of the blasphemy law and defended Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to die for blasphemy against Islam. Taseer had been the most vocal voice against rising militancy in the Punjab, home to more than half of Pakistan’s 170 million people and the country’s political, economic, and cultural center, and had often criticized officials for failing to crack down on terrorist groups.