Under Pakistan's stringent blasphemy laws, insulting the Prophet Mohammed carries the death penalty, though the country has never executed anyone for the crime.
Source/Credit: Yahoo! News
By AFP | September 5, 2015
Lahore (Pakistan) (AFP) - Pakistan police said Saturday they have arrested and imprisoned a Christian man accused of blasphemy in Punjab.
Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in Pakistan, with even unproven allegations often prompting mob violence, and acquittals in court are rare.
"A Christian labourer named Pervaiz Masih was arrested earlier this week and sent on judicial remand for passing derogatory remarks against the prophet of Islam," a local police official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Ali Hussain, a senior police official in the area, confirmed the incident.
He said the accused, a labourer, was working with several Muslim colleagues when the incident occurred.
"They were working on a small construction site, one Muslim fellow was listening to religious speech while the accused was working," he said, adding that when the accused told his colleague to get back to work they had an argument during which the Christian man made derogatory remarks about the prophet of Islam.
"We have registered a case under section 295C against the accused."
The alleged incident occurred in Kasur district, around 54 kilometres (34 miles) southeast of Lahore.
Under Pakistan's stringent blasphemy laws, insulting the Prophet Mohammed carries the death penalty, though the country has never executed anyone for the crime.
But anyone convicted, or even just accused, of insulting Islam, risks a violent and bloody death at the hands of vigilantes.
Bonded labourer Shehzad Masih and his pregnant wife Shama Bibi were beaten by a mob of 1,500 people then thrown into a furnace last year in a crazed reaction to rumours they had thrown pages of the Koran into the garbage.
Critics, including European governments, say Pakistan's blasphemy laws are often misused to settle personal scores.
Christians, who make up around 1.6 percent of the country's 200 million people, are often discriminated against and marginalised by the Muslim majority.
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""A Christian labourer named Pervaiz Masih was arrested earlier this week and sent on judicial remand for passing derogatory remarks against the prophet of Islam," a local police official told AFP on condition of anonymity."
ReplyDelete"Why do they do that?" I used to wonder as a young boy when I heard a Christian lay preacher rant about Ayesha being too young to Marry Muhammad. Shouldn't Abubakar the father of Ayesha show better judgment and more compassion for his daughter? The fact is that Ayesha was of marrying age otherwise Abubakar, a better placed person than Muhammad himself would have taken a stand. Ayesha herself never thought that her father had done any wrong to her as she always proved to be a loving daughter and a loving wife and a loving widow.
But it appears the Christians and the Jews have more feelings for Ayesha than for their own daughters who are having older men because they can and because the society does not give a hoot to what they do. (I sometimes think it's a curse brought on by putting a false blame on Muhammad.)
It appears that people say hurtful things about other religions to confirm their own faith to themselves. It doesn't have to be that way. If you are a Christian you have made a silent announcement that you consider Christianity as the best faith and consider all else false or at least not suited for you; same with the Jews and with other religions and isms. With a slight difference Muslims do the same.
The proper Muslims are different in that they are bound by the Quran which tells them to believe in all prophets of God. What surprises me is that the Quran has nothing but good mention of earlier prophets and saints and earlier believers. Yet Jews and Christians find it expedient to target Muhammad, knowing full well that it would hurt the feelings of Muslims.
A lot of Muslims resort to force and violence as they are bound by the Quran not to blaspheme against earlier prophets, or they could confront Christians with the hurtful things that the Jews say about Mary and about the birth of Jesus and about various grandmothers of Jesus. The Quran has put an effective stop to that by verifying the chastity of Mary and the Immaculate Birth of Jesus.
Muslims could have confronted Jews with the blood thirsty Moses killing prisoners and keeping their women that they falsely painted during their times of captivity to keep the spirits of the Israelite up. Quran gives a totally different picture of Moses, of a savior, not a killer. (I personally have quoted from scriptures about “killer Moses”, to shut up some Jewish propaganda, but never felt right about it.)
Now we need peace if humanity has to go on and we cannot keep peace if we keep on hurting each other’s feelings. So, why don’t we look at it this way? Our faith raise unseen walls around us and anyone interfering with those walls hurts our feelings. So why don’t we make it a point to take care of the walls around us and not interfere with the walls others have around themselves. You can find this idea cocooned in my usual pseudo philosophical treatment of “Walls and Peace” in http://www.lohar.com/blog/?p=29