Source/Credit: The Star | South Asia Bureau
By Rick Westhead | October 10, 2011
There’s no shortage of reminders nowadays of how dangerous Pakistan has become.
Kidnappings are rampant, suicide bombers strike crowded markets, and sectarian violence is commonplace.
Even sitting for a school exam comes with risks.
In the Pakistani village of Havelian, a Christian Grade 8 student named Faryal Bhatti has been accused of blasphemy after making a spelling mistake on a test, a miscue that has had drastic and life-changing consequences for her whole family.
Bhatti’s case is the latest in a string of incidents that highlight the growing influence of radical Islamists in Pakistan, and it also serves as a reminder of the government’s frequent inability or unwillingness to curb them.
“We live in dangerous times,” one Lahore-based scholar told the Star recently. “The threat of someone accusing you of blasphemy is like the Salem witch trials. They kill you first and ask if you’re guilty later.”
In January, Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Pakistan’s Punjab state, was assassinated by his bodyguard — shot 27 times in the back — after Taseer promised to repeal or at least tone down the country’s blasphemy laws.
His killer, a police officer named Mumtaz Qadri, was recently sentenced to death by hanging. “My dream has come true,” Qadri reportedly said with a smile as the verdict was announced.
He took time to thank his judge, who, immediately after reading the verdict, took an indefinite leave of absence from his position and went into hiding.
That may sound like a good plan to the 13-year-old Bhatti.
School authorities say Bhatti recently misspelled a word in Urdu in a poem written to celebrate the Prophet Muhammad. Instead of the word “Naat,” which meant a poem of praise, Bhatti misplaced a letter with a dot and instead wrote the word “Laanat,” which means curse.
Bhatti’s teacher reportedly beat her in front of her class and then referred the case to the school’s principal.
As news of Bhatti’s infraction spread through the village, close to Abbottabad, the city north of Islamabad where Osama bin Laden hid in plain sight for years, religious clerics rallied locals to protest in the streets.
Bhatti should be expelled, they demanded, and her family evicted from their home. Protestors chanted slogans against the student, her family, and Christianity, The Express Tribune newspaper reported. Her case was a “conspiracy against Islam,” clerics said in Friday sermons, according to the newspaper.
At a packed meeting of clerics, school staff and scholars, Bhatti apologized and said there was no malice in her mistake.
“I am still unclear of Faryal Bhatti’s intentions,” Maulana Syed Ejaz Ali, a cleric from the Jamia Masjid reportedly told the meeting. “The eyes filled with tears show her innocence, but her dot made the word derogatory and this is a good enough reason for a consequence and she should never in her life dare to think anything against Islam.”
Bhatti was expelled. But clerics weren’t done.
Local government administrators agreed to have Bhatti’s mother transferred from her government job as a nurse and the family evicted from their home in a cantonment area populated by public servants.
The high-profile case has further polarized news media and religious leaders alike in nuclear-armed Pakistan.
“I protest against the decision of expelling the child and transferring the mother,” said Maulana Mehfooz Ali Khan, an Islamabad-based cleric. “This action by the committee has printed a very negative image about Islam on the child’s mind, we want the people to learn about Islam, not to make them hate it.”
Several English-language newspapers decried the case. Shyema Sajjad, a deputy editor with Dawn newspaper, wrote in a blog posting that Bhatti’s case is a reminder of the new realities facing Pakistanis.
“Tolerance and respect are two virtues that were kidnapped a long, long time ago, they remain missing even today,” Sajjad wrote.
“But who is going to point these things out? The government’s too busy fighting international threats to focus on the internal ones breeding throughout the country. The few who do take a stand are shot down and although they might not be forgotten, their sacrifices often are. We cause a hue and cry about educating our children and spreading awareness but who needs this education if all it does is create hatred and differences?”
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