Pakistan: Laws to be reviewed post-Christian havoc

Source: Associated Press

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan's prime minister pledged Thursday to review laws that are "detrimental to religious harmony" nearly a week after a Muslim mob killed eight Christians following rumors that a Quran was desecrated.

Though he did not specify it, Yousuf Raza Gilani's announcement suggests that the government may review Pakistan's blasphemy laws, which can carry the death penalty for those convicted of insulting Islam, the Prophet Muhammad or the Muslim holy book.

To date no one has been executed under the blasphemy laws, but those prosecuted tend to be non-Muslim minorities. Anyone can make an accusation under the laws, and they are often misused to settle personal scores. Still, attempts to reform the related rules in the past have met with tremendous resistance in the conservative nation of 175 million, which is 95 percent Muslim.

"A committee comprising constitutional experts, the minister for minorities, the religious affairs minister and other representatives will discuss the laws detrimental to religious harmony to sort out how they could be improved," Gilani told a gathering in Gojra, the city where the eight Christians were killed and scores of homes belonging to Christians were burned last week.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hkiMxbHNH0BqgpWA2ZG6VD6wVTmAD99TCHI80

Reform will happen sooner in Saudi Arabia than in Pakistan.

Benazir Bhutto, for example, was anything but a 'religious barbarian'.

There is often strong division and conflict between the ultra-religious and the rest - sometimes, as now, reaching the point of civil war.

Yet I found it rather ironic that a day or two after reading an article emphasizing precisely this, how the Punjab isn't the NWFP and is more tolerant, less fundamentalist because the mullahs there are from older families and more tolerant, this happens.

Gojra's in the Punjab, and isn't a podunk little village. I think, it was where the Anglican church HQ in Pakistan was based.

It undermines that bit of first-class reporting rather adroitly, I think. Now, there's a lot of conflict and division, but the "ultra-religious" seem to easily get the upper hand as those with "lower hands" retire to the background. Of course, it was official policy since ul-Haq.

Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy law, enacted by President General Zia-ul-Haq in1986 and later amended by the parliament in 2004, is one of the most stringent laws. The penalty includes a mandatory death sentence for defaming Prophet Mohammad and life imprisonment for desecrating the Holy Quran. According to official reports, to date, over 500 people have been charged for breaching the Blasphemy Law. Dawn.com traces the history of some of these cases that have been highlighted in the media since 1990.


2009 – August 05: An angry mob attacked the house of an elderly woman in District Sanghar, Sindh, accusing her of desecrating the Holy Quran. A case has not yet been registered but the District Bar Association assured the mob that if the woman – identified as Akhtari Malkani – is found guilty, she will be charged under the Blasphemy Law.

2009 – August 01: Seven people were burnt alive and 18 others injured in Gojra, District Toba Tek Singh in Punjab after fresh violence erupted in the town over the alleged desecration of the Holy Quran three days ago. More than 50 houses were set on fire.

2009 – July 31: A mob burnt 75 houses of members of the Christian community over the alleged desecration of the Holy Quran in the village Azafi Abadi at Gojra-Faisalabad Road. Seventy-five houses and two churches were burnt by the residents of a neighbouring village.

2009 – February: Five Ahmadis in Punjab’s Layyah district were arrested on charges of writing blasphemous remarks in the toilets of Kot Sultan’s Gulzar-e-Madina mosque. No evidence or witness was presented. They were just detained on a ‘presumption of guilt,’ stated the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

2009 – January 28: The Punjab police arrested a labourer and four students for blasphemy, all of whom were Ahmadis. They were accused of writing the name of Prophet Mohammed on the wall of a toilet in a Sunni mosque. Investigations into the case revealed that the accusation was baseless.

2008 – May: The Punjab police jailed Robin Sardar, a Christian physician, upon an accusation of blasphemy from a Muslim street-vendor who wanted to set up his shop in front of Sardar's clinic.

snip

2008 – April 08
2008 – March 06
2007 – October 28
2007 – May 17
2007 – April 13
2007 – April 01

on and on and on...


http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/provinces/18-is-there-an-end-am-01

If a Muslim has "hurt feelings" and wants to lie or exaggerate that's how it goes. Charges of blasphemy, followed by a pogrom (never called that in the West), or false charges at court.

"Hurt feelings" come from having a Xian economically in the way, or more prosperous, or better educated. There's an order, and these are violations of it.

It was that way in the ME and SE Europe for a long time, as well (hence one reason for a lot of Muslim population there--when you're Albanian and realize that you can garner at least a little official favor, some land, and avoidance of the devshirme by simply converting, you convert--not conversion at swordpoint, but at "oppression point").