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| India-Pakistan | |
| Court convicts imam and son for blasphemy | |
| 2011-01-12 | |
| [Dawn] A Pakistain court has jugged a Mohammedan prayer leader and his 20-year-old son for life on controversial blasphemy charges in the rural centre of the country, court officials said Tuesday. The case follows the killing of Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer by his bodyguard last Tuesday, after the outspoken politician called for reform of the law that was recently used to sentence a Christian woman to death.
Judge Mohammad Ayub, heading an anti-terrorism court in the central Pak town of Muzaffargarh, handed down a life sentence to the pair on Monday, his assistant Faisal Karim told AFP by telephone. The prosecution alleged organisers of the event, which commemorated the anniversary of the Prophet Mohammad's birth, said the pair had "pulled the poster down, tore it and trampled it under their feet," Karim said. "The judge sentenced them to life imprisonment on charges of blasphemy and ordered them to pay a fine of 200,000 rupees ($2,350) each," he said. Liberal politicians and human rights ... which are not the same thing as individual rights, mind you... activists in Pakistain say the blasphemy law, which carries the death penalty for the worst offences, is sometimes used to settle personal scores and encourages extremism. Defence counsel Arif Gurmani vowed to challenge the verdict in the high court because "it has been given in haste" and was the result of inter-faith rivalries, he said. "Both are Mohammedans. The case is the result of differences between Deobandi and Barelvi sects of Sunni Mohammedans," he said. "Shafi is a practising Mohammedan, he is the imam of a mosque and he had recently returned from a pilgrimage to Soddy Arabia.... I am defending them because I am convinced they are not guilty of blasphemy," he said. Nobody has been executed in Pakistain for blasphemy and those given the death penalty have so far had their sentences overturned or commuted on appeal. Since Taseer's liquidation, right-wing religious holy mans have heaped praise on his killer and stoked controversy over reform of the law. The government has said it has no plan to reform the law. The controversy was sparked when former information minister Sherry Rehman tabled a private member's bill in November, seeking to abolish the death penalty for blasphemy. | |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #7 I've beheaded several neighbors for being less-Catholic than me... well, actually, that never happened, and the thought to do so never occurred to me. See the difference, Eohippus? Perhaps not.... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2011-01-12 19:28 |
| #6 which ended suddenly when one of the accused fled to Boston and sued the accusers for libel. But that wasn't in the play. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-01-12 19:25 |
| #5 A local hysteria lasting a few months, which ended suddenly when one of the accused fled to Boston and sued the accusers for libel. The accusations came to a screeching halt. The entire community recognized this situation as evil, publicly repented, and rewrote their laws. Eohippus' comparison does not hold up; it is merely an excuse to say something snotty about faith. |
| Posted by: mom 2011-01-12 19:12 |
| #4 Think Salem witch trials. The useful thing about religion is you can always drum up a reason to kill your neighbors. (If you're so inclined). |
| Posted by: Eohippus Flaing5383 2011-01-12 14:21 |
| #3 'moose, that sounds like leftists everywhere fascist, communist, socialist, Democrat, whatever. The difference is usually only in the directness or nuance of their violence. |
| Posted by: Alan Cramer 2011-01-12 09:48 |
| #2 Islam effectively creates a situation where the most violent and extreme rule, not by their doctrines or ideas, but solely by their willingness to hurt others, while hiding behind a veneer of orthodoxy that protects them from retribution. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-01-12 08:13 |
| #1 Islamic revolution eating its own children? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2011-01-12 06:06 |