An Islamic leader is calling on western countries to limit freedom of speech because unless they stop people from drawing pictures of Muhammad, they will be inciting World War III.
Sirajul Haq, the leader of the Islamic extremist Jamaat-e-Islami Party in Pakistan, told a crowd during a protest celebrating the attack on French newspaper Charlie Hebdo that the United Nations and western leaders need to make sure religious personalities are not mocked.
“The path that the West has chosen will take the world to a third world war,” Haq told the crowd.
Haq also demanded that France issue a formal apology for allowing Charlie Hebdo to exist and for offending “billions of Muslims across the world.”
Jamaat-e-Islami is calling for a worldwide boycott of French products by Muslims as a way to show their anger toward France for allowing anyone to mock Muhammad. The group also is part of a circle of Muslim extremist groups that have offered a $1.6 million bounty for the heads of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists.
Thirteen Pakistani Christian families are homeless after refusing to enter into “bonded labor”, or a form of slavery.
Local government officials had told the Christians that unless the male heads of the families entered into the slavery-like contract at a local brick kiln factory, the would be driven from the area around Samundri.
The contracts state that if something happens to the one who signs the deal, family members would have to work off the debt should the person die. Currently about 75 percent of bonded labor in Pakistan are children working for deceased parents, according to the Barnabas Fund.
The kiln factory in this situation is owned by Muslims who told the local government if they couldn’t get the Christians to agree to slave labor, they would build a hospital on the site of the Christian’s homes.
A report from the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement says that the Muslim factory owners do not pay enough for anyone to overcome their debts and the young Christian women are taken and sold as sex slaves in the human trafficking market.
The Pakistan government has announced plans to execute 500 convicted terrorists in response to the Taliban’s killing of 133 children and 15 teachers at an Army Public School in Peshawar.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had announced last week the government was lifting a moratorium on the death penalty in terrorism related cases. Reports say that at least six terrorists have already been hung.
“Interior ministry has finalized the cases of 500 convicts who have exhausted all the appeals, their mercy petitions have been turned down by the president and their executions will take place in coming weeks,” an unnamed source told AFP news agency.
Pakistan officials said the attack on the school was their own country’s 9/11.
The United Nations has spoken out against Pakistan ending the moratorium on the death penalty for convicted terrorists.
The terrorists were unrepentant, releasing a video saying they will continue to kill children if any of the terrorists children are killed by military action against them.
A vigil was held outside the White House for the 132 children and nine staff members murdered by the Taliban in an Pakistan school.
Visitors to the vigil included the deputy chief of Mission at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington who said he wanted to show his country’s leadership was supportive of those standing for the memory of those children.
“I am to be with those who are here to express solidarity and support for the victims and the families of those who were killed in Peshawar,” Asad Majeed Khan told the Christian Post.
“You can see people from all colors and creeds and people with the different religions have come together in support and solidarity,” Khan asserted. “This is a message that I take also from here this evening that this is not a fight for any country in particular, this is not a particular ethnic group or a particular religion’s fight, this is a fight in which we are all together.”
Those participating held candles and a moment of silence to honor the victims. Many also held signs and banners calling for the destruction of the Taliban.
The Pakistani Supreme Court has ordered the arrest of two Muslim clerics that they say incited a mob to kill two Christians last month after they made false accusations of the couple desecrating the Koran.
In addition to the clerics, five police officials who failed to take action to protect the couple have also been arrested for their lack of action.
“Why they did not make an attempt to secure the couple as they could disperse the mob through aerial firing?” Chief Justice Nasirul Mulk asked. “It is because of the police’s negligence that the tragic incident occurred.”
In the incident last month, 28-year-old Shama Bibi and her husband Shahzah Masih, 32, were burnt in a kiln by a Muslim mob. The mob had been informed at a mosque that the couple has been found guilty of blasphemy against Islam.
It turned out that the Bibi had burned items that her late father-in-law used to perform black magic and his family was so upset they told the clerics she had burned a Koran to get the Muslims to kill her.
The police report that over 100 people have been arrested on at least one charge connected to the unlawful killing of the couple.
In a rare break among Islamic terrorist groups and countries that support them, the Pakistani Taliban has been roundly denounced for their attack on a school that left 132 children dead.
The Pakistani Taliban has been attempting to justify their attack by saying that the assault was revenge against the army for an offensive against the terrorist organization. The terrorists said their families had suffered losses, so it was right to kill the children of army members.
The spokesman for the Afghanistan branch of the Taliban condemned the attack as being against the basics of Islam.
“The intentional killing of innocent people, children and women is against the basics of Islam and this criteria has to be considered by every Islamic party and government,” Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement, according to Reuters.
The Iranian government also released a statement strongly condemning the terrorist action.
“This is a totally un-Islamic and inhumane act. Terrorism, extremism and endangering the lives of innocent people, in any form and with any objective, is condemned,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham told reporters.
Pakistan’s prime minister Nawaz Sharif says the government had tried to negotiate with the terror group but the talks broke down, leading to a military offensive against the group.
Islamist group the Taliban has killed over 100 children in an attack on a Pakstiani school in an attack that took hours. The assault was a revenge attack for the Nobel Peace Prize being given to Malala Yousafzai for her standing up to the Islamists.
The attack lasted over eight hours before Pakistani military was able to eliminate the last of the terrorists in Army Public School in Peshawar.
“The gunmen entered class by class and shot some kids one by one,” a student told local media.
The terrorists attacked around 11 a.m. local time when 500 students between grades one through ten were in the building.
“We were standing outside the school and firing suddenly started and there was chaos everywhere and the screams of children and teachers,” Jamshed Khan, a school bus driver, told NBC News.
Sources say that the terrorists killed one teacher by dousing them with gasoline and burning them alive while they forced the students to watch.
“Our suicide bombers have entered the school, they have instructions not to harm the children, but to target the army personnel,” Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani told Reuters.
In the wake of a Christian couple being burned inside a brick kiln due to false accusations of blasphemy, three more cases of Christians being accused of blasphemy has emerged from Pakistan.
A Muslim north of Lahore claims he found burned pages of the Quran along with a page that listed a bunch of Christians. He claimed that the Christians on the list must have burned the Quran or else they would have not been on the attached list.
“I don’t know who has done this heinous act, but I am sure that the perpetrator is very much against the Christian community,” Pastor Arif Masih, who is on the list, told World Watch Monitor.
In another incident, a 70-year-old Christian man was hired to whitewash a mosque including a signboard that contained writing from the Quran. The Christian man was beaten by a mob of Muslims as he performed his work.
The Christian man, Bashir Masih, was accused of blasphemy by the Muslim mob that attacked him.
Local officials say that while the charges have been filed, they have confirmed he was hired to do the work and that the issue is really between two separate Muslim groups.
The Minority Rights Group International report says these incidents are becoming common.
“Since 2001, violence and discrimination against Christians has increased. Seen as connected to the ‘West’ due to their faith, Christians have at times been scapegoated for the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, as well as the immense human suffering seen as a consequence of interventions in other countries with large Muslim populations”.
Police in Lahore, Pakistan tortured and killed a 35-year-old Christian man, setting off a firestorm of protest in the city.
The family of the slain man, Rakha Shahzad, stormed the police facility demanding justice for his killing. The agents claimed the Christian man had drugs and alcohol in his system as well as selling them and died of a “heart attack” during questioning.
The family says that Shahzad was arrested because he was a Christian.
Local Christian officials say that Shahzad’s death is just the latest in ongoing campaigns of hate and intimidation against the Christians of the region by Islamic officials.
“The whole world is still deeply shocked and outraged for the lynching of the Christian couple in Kasur, but violence continues: it is urgent to repeal laws that are routinely used to persecute Christians and ensure justice and legality, starting with the work and the behavior of the police and public officials,” Christian lawyer Mushtaq Gill told The Christian Post.
At least 44 people have been arrested in connection with the lynching of the Christian couple. Gill hopes that police officials in Lahore will be investigated and charged in the death of Shahzad.
The government followed through on their proclamation they would find the people responsible for the mob murder of two Christians on false charges of blasphemy.
However, the local officials tried to deny that Muslims were behind the attack.
“We have arrested 44 people, it was a local issue incited by the mullah of a local mosque,” said Jawad Qamar, a regional police chief from Kot Radha Kishan, Punjab province, according to The Guardian. “No particular sectarian group or religious outfit was behind the attack.”
A Muslim mob attacked Shahzad Masih, 28, and Shama Bibi, 25, because someone found a burned Koran and claimed the Christian couple had burned it in a brick kiln before throwing it away.
The mob then beat the couple and threw them alive into the brick kiln to cremate the bodies.
“The Pakistani state has to act proactively to protect its minorities from violence and injustice,” Pakistan Prime Minster Nawaz Sharif said.
