A judge in Pakistan demonstrates how Christians are treated in his country, where they have no First Amendment:
Sunday, February 07, 2010
by Spero News
A court in Faisalabad, Pakistan, sentenced to life imprisonment Imran Masih, a young Christian, for having insulted and desecrated the Koran, according to the Minorities Concern newsletter.
On July 1, 2009 Masih, a shopkeeper by profession, was brutally tortured by a group of Muslims, then arrested by police on charges – allegedly fabricated- that he had burned pages of the Koran.
On January 11, 2010 the judge sentenced him to prison for life, which he will serve in the federal prison in Faisalabad where he is currently confined.
The court also imposed an additional penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment and payment of 100 thousand rupees (just over 800 euros), under provisions of the law prohibiting blasphemy against Islam.
Heaven’s Family provides the additional details that the mob that accused Mr. Masih of desecrating a copy of the Koran also ran his father and the rest of his family out of town after looting their grocery store. As is customary in such cases, the younger Mr. Masih was taken into custody and tortured again by the police.
However, not everyone in Pakistan agrees with the verdict. The Dawn offers this observation:
Might one beseech Their Lordships of the Supreme Court to take suo motu notice of the seeming injustice done to Imran Masih of Hajvairy, Faisalabad, who was most recently sentenced to life in prison on the charge of blasphemy; a charge that seems so far-fetched that it stretches one’s credulity to extreme limits. For, My Lords, it would seem highly unlikely that a Christian who ran a shop in a bazaar, surrounded by good Muslim shopkeepers, would suddenly get it into his head to burn pages of the Holy Quran, and blaspheme our Prophet (PBUH) in plain sight and the hearing of his reported rival Haji Abdul Ghafoor, the complainant. Unless he was mad of course, for which the proper thing would be to commit him to a psychological examination and thence to the madhouse.
Might one add that Their Lordships must move with alacrity and before poor Imran Masih is harmed physically, indeed killed outright, by a vigilante fellow prisoner who considers himself to be another good Muslim. It has happened before as we well know, not only to members of our minority communities, but even to Muslims in other, mostly rigged, cases of ‘blasphemy’. We are a quite unique people as we well know too, who prey on the weak and the vulnerable, and all in the name of God. (Our emphasis)
(Note for non-lawyers: ”Suo motu” is a Latin legal term that means the same thing as our expression, “sua sponte“, which is used to indicate a court taking action on its own.)
We think that mob violence should almost never produce probable cause for an arrest, especially in this country. In fact, the last recorded lynching in the United States was in 1981 (Details live here, but that incident looks to us more like a random homicide than the work of a traditional lynch mob).
The point is, around here, the Koran is a book and Islam is no more or less protected than United Methodism or those guys you used to see at the airport before 9/11. We’ve never been particularly impressed with the way Islamic judicial systems safeguard their citizens’ freedom of religion (mostly because they don’t have any), and we’d have to disagree with The Dawn about whether judicial independence is really an issue in this case. Our guess is that the learned judge was perfectly happy to let Mr. Masih rot in jail for the rest of his life, thereby enhancing his reputation with the faithful and keeping his courtroom from being looted by the same frenzied citizens who brought the case.
THX to Weasel Zippers.
UPDATE: We don’t know how responsive the Supreme Court of Pakistan is to appeals from the international/infidel community, but it wouldn’t hurt to write to them on behalf of Mr. Masih to ask for clemency. The address of the Chief Justice is:
Mr. Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry
Should review the case of Mr. Masih.
Constitution Avenue, Islamabad
Although we’d have to say we’re not optimistic. A list of some of the accomplishments of the Court’s Human Rights Cell lives here:
Quick provision of relief to the common man without any expense has generated a high degree of trust and confidence of the general public in the judiciary as a whole and the apex Court in particular. The Human Rights exercise has also played a pivotal role in eliminating social evils like Vani [the practice of resolving blood-feuds by forcing children of different tribes to marry], Karo Kari [ritual murder of women], dangerous kite-flying etc, which were rampant in the society to the detriment of the common man.
No, we don’t think that a country where they put kite flying on a par with forced marriage of children and homicide will be receptive to Western notions of religious freedom. But it’s worth a try.
