MURREE, Pakistan -- At this time of year, the Murree Christian School normally would be filled with students. But these are not normal times.
The classrooms are empty, the library books unopened. The maintenance workers have so little to do they're polishing the leaves on the potted plants. The wild monkeys that live on the grounds look miffed and hungry: With no children eating lunch on the outdoor patio, there's no one to steal food from.
"We're a school without kids or staff at the moment," said Simon Malik, operations manager of the missionary-run boarding school. "It doesn't make sense, but that's the way we're operating."
On Sept. 15, four days after Islamic extremists allegedly staged the terrorist attacks on the United States, the school decided to send its 150 students home as tensions increased between Muslims and Christians worldwide.
The Christian school that Simon Malik runs in Pakistan has been closed since Sept. 15.
Since retaliatory strikes began Sunday against the Muslim nation of Afghanistan, several more Christian schools in Pakistan have temporarily closed because of worries about a backlash.
Yet there have been no reports of violence against Christians in Pakistan, and if recent history is any guide, there might not be any.
"I think Christians have a lot of religious freedom in Pakistan, which a lot of other Muslim countries do not allow," Malik said. "They are very free to practice their beliefs and they have very good privileges. The government looks after all church buildings just like mosques, and whenever we feel insecure we can call for help and they will send armed guards."
The Rev. John William, head of St. Michael's Catholic Church in Peshawar, has worried about rumors that some Muslims threatened to kill Christians if the United States bombed Afghanistan. Like Malik, though, the priest has faith in Pakistan's leaders.
"The government is very alert and conscious of this, and has assured us they'll look after us," Williams said.
Pakistan, the world's seventh-most populous nation, is overwhelmingly Muslim. Only about 5 percent of its 140-million people are worshipers of other faiths, with Christians accounting for about half of the religious minorities.
Some sects believe Christianity spread to this region as early as the first century, when St. Thomas the Apostle purportedly journeyed from the Middle East to Central Asia. However, most experts agree that Christianity became established here during the British colonial era, which began two centuries ago and ended in 1947, when British India was divided into the new nations of India and Pakistan.
Since he took power in a 1999 coup, President Pervez Musharraf has won praise for trying to increase the rights of Pakistan's Christians and other religious minorities.
His most significant move -- and one that has angered many of the nation's Muslim religious leaders -- has been to try to soften Law 295C. It says, in effect, that anyone who blasphemes Islam or the prophet Mohammad should be put to death by hanging.
Under previous regimes, the law was used to punish dissidents of all kinds, drawing Pakistan sharp condemnation from international human rights groups. "The present government seems to be sincere enough about doing something about this section of the law," William said, "but I really wonder if Musharraf can succeed. There's a lot of pressure on him from the (Islamic) religious parties."
Musharraf has also tried to boost the political clout of Christians and other religious minorities.
He appointed one Christian to head five government ministries, and he has guaranteed minorities a total of 5 percent of the seats in the 240-member National Assembly.
Critics, however, say the handful of seats allotted to minorities is not nearly enough to give them any significant voice in the government.
In recent years, Christians in Pakistan have largely escaped the violent persecution that has plagued those in neighboring India, where religious workers have been killed and churches burned.
However, Pakistan has not been without religious tension.
In 1997, what began as a simple argument between a Muslim and a Christian in southern Pakistan escalated into such a highly charged religious conflict that an entire village was destroyed. And several times in the past 20 years, a Catholic girls school in northern Pakistan has been stoned and marched on by demonstrators.
The school is padlocked and guarded by a police officer who works for the school.
Malik, of the Murree Christian School, acknowledges that concern about the safety of students was one reason the board of directors decided to send them home.
"Once the parents leave their kids, they're our responsibility and we have to be very cautious," he said.
The school is nestled among tall pines in the mountaintop town of Murree, where the British once flocked in summer to escape the brutal heat of Rawalpindi, 40 miles to the south. The library, gym and classrooms are in a former Presbyterian church, which was built by the Church of Scotland in 1909 and used by the British garrison based in Murree as its place of worship.
Christian missionaries founded the school itself in 1956 to educate their own offspring from grades 1 through 12. It has since grown to serve the children of diplomats and other expatriates from several nations including Britain, Canada and the United States. Pakistani Christians also attend.
The school stayed open after the Sept. 11 attacks on America, but it quickly became apparent that it wouldn't be business as usual.
"After seeing what happened, families felt they should be together and a lot of parents started pulling their children out," Malik said. "After a few days we started to lose enrollment, and we saw that by the next week we'd only have about 50 percent of the students left."
The school was supposed to close for just a month, but that has been extended to February. Although students and teachers are now scattered all over the globe, the kids were given a month's worth of homework and everyone keeps in touch by e-mail.
Mindful that jobs are hard to find here, the board of directors is continuing to pay Malik and the 40 other Pakistani employees. They are working hard at staying busy, building new furniture for the dorms, scrubbing down the kitchen and even motorizing the backboard on the basketball court so it can be automatically raised and lowered.
While most of the school's Pakistani staff is Muslim, Malik is a Christian. But he was raised among Muslims and says 90 percent of his friends are followers of Islam. He attends some of their religious festivities, and they attend some of his.
Malik says it has bothered him to hear Muslims denounce the United States in the wake of the airstrikes against Afghanistan. Yet he understands their reaction.
"It is natural," he says. "When Christians were being persecuted in India, we felt the same way. We felt that a great injustice was being done to our brothers. We understand how Muslims feel because we Christians have felt the same."