The fear and the fervour - updates on the Rimsha case

Christian activist talks to the Imam accusing Rimsha

The way Rimsha's case has been hijacked by extremists, including extremist lawyers, as described in our last article, is representative of the way fear and fervour are used as weapons to inflict dhimmitude on the Christian and other minority communities.

Christian activists in Pakistan are pointing to the following video (Urdu only) which is of a TV program discussing the case, where from about 12 minutes in the local Imam (pictured above) who is pressing charges against Rimsha openly admits that he used his Friday sermons to incite violence against Christians and drive them from the area.  The man who initially accused Rimsha was simply acting on his incitement.

Part of the background is that the imams have been instructing Muslim landlords to evict Christian tenants, and many of them are refusing to.  It appears that Rimsha was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and was used as an excuse to drive the Christians from their homes, as shown by the instant organized riots and attacks on the community.  In other words, once again we have a blasphemy case that is intrinsically linked to Islamicist attacks on Christians and a land dispute.  

Two weeks after the initial incident, only a few Christians have filtered back to the region - most want to stay in the forest where they are camping out - and those who have returned are terrified.  In the Guardian article we referred to in the last post, it ends like this  :


"One Christian, Arif Masih, returned to his house in Mehrabadi after nine days to find it looted. "People are so afraid, they cannot sleep at night," he said. "We just want to leave, we want to be given somewhere else to live," said Masih."