Protest against Blasphemy at no 10

We enclose a video of highlights from last weekends protest about blasphemy laws at 10 Downing Street.  Thanks to World-Wide Ethnic Broadband TV for the video.  They currently have it as the top video on their site.

Blasphemy, bible, children and sharia: Karachi, Bangladesh and Egypt

As we have seen, Muslim extremists have no compunction in attacking children and the vulnerable. They did it with Rimsha, and now the Taliban have shot a courageous 14 year old Muslim girl as she waited for her school bus, because she has exposed their atrocities and stood up for education for girls and the rights of women which they despise.  The pitiful excuse from Pakistani Taliban?  'Whoever leads a campaign against Sharia and Islam is ordered to be killed by Sharia'.
Oh yes, lets shoot unarmed schoolgirls and claim she was leading a campaign against 'Sharia'.  Was she?  If Sharia involves the oppression of women and the massacres of innocents, then yes she did.
Apparently it is 'obligatory' to kill such courageous people.  They justify it by citing the example of one of the companions of the prophet of Islam who killed his blind wife for using words against the prophet, a prophet who praised that self same act.  It also justifies the killing of the young by referring to an alleged godly and righteous teacher of Moses mentioned in the Koran who killed a child, and justified by saying that the child would bring a 'bad name' upon his godly parents.
This is the kind of pathetic and satanic excuse that these Taliban barbarians use for trying to murder an innocent and unarmed schoolgirl in cold blood.  If you want to read what they said (and their claim that they did not attack her because of her educational work, and that it is all lies of the media - see here.

Blind Faith - documentary on blasphemy laws

Apologies about the missing section / rough cut between the two videos, this is how it is on youtube.

Imam arrested, Rimsha still imprisoned

Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti aka Khalid Jadoon 

being led to court.  Photo AFP

As many readers of BPCA will already know, the imam who accused Rimsha of blasphemy has been arrested for fabricating evidence after a witness at his mosque reported that he had added torn pages of the Quran to ashes allegedly from Rimsha Masih's bag, allegedly saying 'This will get rid of the Christians'.  Reports indicate that several more witnesses have come forward to confirm this. Wilson Chowdhry our Chairman was interviewed on this emerging news on Sunday morining by 11 BBC local Radio stations including BBC Humberside, BBC Torquay, BBC Manchester and others.  This is good news, but BPCA would like to point out

1) that the charges were originally about pages burnt from a book teaching Arabic.  As far as we know, these accusations still stand.  Moreover Blasphemy cases are cognisable; a legal definition that means she will have to go through the court process unless President Zardari uses his power of veto.  There is no other option such as retraction of the charges or any other compromise.  So at this stage Rimsha is not yet exonerated. 

2) Rimsha is still in prison, in adult prison although she is a minor with learning difficulties, locked up with Islamicists and murderers, including the man who assassinated governor Taseer over the blasphemy laws.

3)  According to sources, even though she is so traumatized she can barely speak, the police have apparently sent a report saying that she admitted to burning the pages of the book.  Given the pressure felt by even adult and mentally normal people accused of blasphemy, and given her age and condition and trauma, the BPCA wants to highlight this fact, and that such 'confessions' could still be used against her.

4)  Chishti's lawyer has openly called for Rimsha to be killed if she is released / aquitted.  

5) We support the use of maximum penalties against him.  In the Old Testament, one of the times when 'eye for an eye' was mandated was when people falsely accused others.  It acts as a deterrent.  Christian forgiveness should not  However, the fact remains that 

a) the laws are wrong, and a tool of discrimination and need to change

b) the must be a concerted revolution in the attitude of Pakistani society over cases like this - after all so many Christians and judges have been murdered when they were correctly acquitted, others have to go into hiding for the rest of their lives and emigrate.  

c) Muslims are all too frequently let off, while maximum penalties are applied to Christians on very dubious, if not outright false charges.

d) This one case, even if he does get charged and convicted, and not let off after pressure from the usual sources, does not change the fact that point c) applies across Pakistan.

6)  The imam has been arrested because of the outrageousness of his accusations, the nature of the victim, and the fact that there were eyewitnesses to his duplicity who were prepared to come forward.  A one off case as clear cut like this does not help those many other victims who don't have people prepared to stand up for them, whose cases are less in the public eye, and whose alleged crimes (eg spoken word blasphemy cases only) leave no physical evidence of the falsity of the accusations - it's just the word of one (despised, and disbelieved under Sharia law) Christian against that of an 'honoured Muslim'.  Even if all goes as it should, the unjust laws, especially given the deeply discriminatory and terroristic nature of Pakistani society for minorities, continue.  

7) This one case is one of many many other cases of blasphemy accusations, each equally spurious, but for whom justice is unlikely to be done, especially since they are not in the eye of the media

8)  For instance, Asia Bibi is still on death row, sentenced to death, and living in fear of fellow prisoners poisoning her.  

Sources  1, 2, 3