In the latest round of Christian persecution in Pakistan, a Christian couple was falsely accused of desecrating a Koran and then murdered.
The murder took place in Kot Radha Kirshan, a village about 40 miles from the city of Lahore according to the BBC.
The married couple, identified only as Shama and Shehzad, had worked at a brick kiln. A desecrated Koran was found in the area of the kiln earlier in the day and a Muslim mob decided it had to be the Christian couple. So they killed them and stuffed their bodies into the brick kiln.
The chief minister of the region has said he will investigate the killings.
The American Center for Law and Justice, who has been raising the alarm about Asia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death on false accusations of blaspheming Mohammed, is calling for the U.S. to end foreign aid to Pakistan until they take steps to stop the killing of Christians.
While the leaders of Pakistan were using a blasphemy law to persecute Christians and keep a Christian mother jailed on false charges, the United States was giving the Pakistani government over $7.5 billion.
The American Center for Law and Justice is now calling for the United States to end financial aid to countries that persecute religious minorities.
“We must stop sending billions of our taxpayer dollars to nations that persecute Christians. It’s that simple. Not one more dime for persecution. Cut off American foreign aid to any country that persecutes Christians,” a petition started by the ACLJ reads. “As a wave of persecution sweeps across the Middle East — and Christians flee for their lives — it’s time for the money to stop. Already there is growing support for basic human rights and basic common sense on Capitol Hill.”
The focus of the petition is Asia Bibi, a Christian woman falsely accused of blasphemy by Muslims who were upset she took a drink of water from a bowl they wanted to use to drink.
Bibi’s death sentence for blasphemy is now in the hands of the country’s supreme court.
The Pakistani government is receiving condemnation and pressure from around the world over a death sentence given to a Christian woman falsely accused of blasphemy.
Asia Bibi has been jailed for four years after a Muslim woman who was angry she drew water from the same bowl as her made false accusations that Bibi, a Christian, blasphemed the prophet Mohammed.
One Christian group said they are working to increase the international pressure on Pakistan for giving a death penalty to a woman simply because she is a Christian.
“We continue to hope because, as Christians, our faith nourishes hope. We continue to pray for Asia Bibi and for her release, so that the Lord protects and comforts her. But there are many elements that are not conducive to optimism,” Haroon Barkat, director of the Masihi Foundation, told Fides News Agency.
The Christian leaders in the nation who have been fighting for Bibi are taking the case to the nation’s Supreme Court.
A Pakistani court has upheld a death sentence for a Christian woman who was accused of blaspheming the prophet Mohammed during an argument with a Muslim woman.
The Lahore High Court rejected the appeal of Asia Bibi on her sentence that was passed down by a lower court. Bibi’s lawyers say they will appeal the decision to the country’s Supreme Court.
Bibi was sentenced to death in 2010 for the accusation.
“The case against Asia Bibi is a great example of how Christians and other religious minorities are abused in Pakistan by fundamentalists wielding the controversial blasphemy laws. The blasphemy laws were originally written to protect against religious intolerance in Pakistan, but the law has warped into a tool used by extremists and others to settle personal scores and persecute Pakistan’s vulnerable religious minorities,” International Christian Concern’s Regional Manager for South Asia, William Stark told the Christian Post.
Stark said that many times accusations of blasphemy are used against Christians as weapons.
“Sadly, the vast majority of blasphemy accusations brought against Christians and others are false. Unfortunately, pressure from Islamic radical groups and general discrimination against Christians in Pakistan has transformed trial courts and now appeals courts into little more than rubber stamps for blasphemy accusations brought against Christians, regardless of the evidence brought to bear in the case.”
The Pakistani police have summarily executed a Christian Pastor.
Zafar Bhatti had been imprisoned since 2012 on charges that he has committed blasphemy for preaching Jesus was the only way. The men had long been receiving death threats from fellow prisoners and guards because of their Christian faith.
“This is a barbaric act,” Xavier Williams of Life for All told The Express Tribune. “There had been threats. The court should have instructed police to ensure Bhatti’s safety.”
The country passed a blasphemy law claiming that it would be a tool to stop religious intolerance in the country. However, Muslims have used the law as a way to take religious minorities to jail them, force them to convert to Islam or kill them.
“Unfortunately, pressure from Islamic radical groups and general discrimination against Christians in Pakistan has transformed trial courts into little more than rubber stamps for blasphemy accusations brought against Christians, regardless of the evidence brought to bear in the case,” William Stark of the International Christian Concern said. “Also, little is done to ensure the safety of those merely accused of blasphemy, leading to the deaths of at least 48 people, many of whom could have been proven innocent.”
This is the second major incident involving Christians accused of blasphemy in Pakistan. A Christian couple was sentenced to death in April for sending text messages that were called blasphemous by the court. However, the couple has been proven to be illiterate, so they could not send text messages. The death sentence is still in effect.
A Pakistani man who converted from Hinduism to Christianity has been arrested on charges that he burned a Koran and a chart of Koranic verses.
The family of the accused man says however that Islamic extremist groups have falsely accused the man and a co-worker because a large amount of Hindus are converting to Christianity in their region.
Javed Masih, the Christian convert and his co-worker Anana Lal who is Hindu worked as janitors at the Government Excellent High School in Satellite Town. The school’s headmaster, a Muslim, filed a report on August 29th claiming that he found the charred Koranic verses.
The moment the men were arrested, a mob made up of the Islamic extremist group Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam and Tahafuz Khatan-e-Nabuvat went to the men’s homes and called on the mob to burn the houses and kill the man’s children.
Masih’s wife was able to escape with their three children and is now in protective custody.
“Almost all Hindus who have converted, including us, accepted Christ as our savior not under any pressure, but of our free will,” she told Morning Star News. “The Hindu community is often targeted by Muslim groups, and our girls are forcibly taken and converted to Islam, so the community has a natural hatred for Islam.”
Police has repeatedly offered the Hindu man deals to set him free if he claims the Christian burned the Koran.
The lawyers of a Christian couple accused of sending text messages insulting the prophet Mohammed released a new development.
The couple is illiterate.
The court and those connected with the conviction of Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar have not been able to say how a couple that cannot read or write could be sending text messages. They were basically convicted on the word of one Muslim mosque leader who had been trying to take the couple’s property.
A local Christian leader said incidents like this are increasing in the region.
“We are seriously concerned. Cases like these are common and cause great suffering. We continue to pray, while the issue remains unresolved,” Fr. Aloysius Roy, Superior of the Pakistani province of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, said in the Christian Post. “We express our solidarity, but Christians keep a low profile, because life is full of difficulties and dangers, and for us the first commandment is to survive. Christians are afraid and they move with extreme caution.”
Lawyers for the couple say they not only will use the couple’s illiteracy as the basic for the appeal but also to appeal to the international community.
A Christian husband and wife in Pakistan have been sentenced to death because they allegedly sent a text message with a comment that was insulting to the prophet Mohammed.
Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar from Gojra were sentenced after what has been described as a manipulation of the legal system to benefit a Muslim leader.
Maulvi Mohammed Hussain, a Muslim leader from a mosque in the couple’s home city, complained last year that Emmanuel had used his wife’s phone to send a message that insulted the prophet. Kausar, who did not send or receive the message, was sentenced to death because it was her phone.
The couple’s lawyer, Nadeem Hassan, said that the Islamists brought in a fake SIM card from a phone and claimed it came from the woman’s cell. However, Hassan said the “evidence” was just part of a well-orchestrated plot on the part of the Muslims.
“The complainant was involved in a dispute with the pair and had made a threat with the full knowledge that they would face the death penalty,” he said.
The area of Pakistan where the case was brought is notorious for Muslim residents claiming Christians insulted the prophet as a way to have them killed so their possessions and homes can be taken.
Lady Warsi, a Muslim who is Great Britain’s Faith and Communities Minister, told the BBC that Christianity in large parts of the Middle East and in a majority of Islamic nations is on the brink of extinction.
I’m concerned that the birthplace of Christianity, the parts of the world where Christianity first spread, is now seeing large sections of the Christian community leaving, and those that are remaining feeling persecuted,” Lady Warsi told the BBC Radio 4 Today program. “One in 10 Christians live in a minority situation and large numbers of those who live in a minority situation around the world are persecuted.”
She said that as Islamic extremist groups gain influence, they are able to convince the local population that Christians are “newcomers” to the area that should be driven out when in many cases the Christians were living in the area before the arrival of the Islamists. She also said that Christians are being made the scapegoat for problems in the Middle East created by Islamists.
She also said that violence against Christians in Pakistan is threatening to drive all Christians from that nation.
She said that violence against Christians worldwide should not just reverberate in the Christian community but in all communities.
The Pakistani Taliban announced they have chosen as their new leader the man who planned the assassination of a teenage girl.
Mullah Fazlullah, who designed a failed assassination attempt on schoolgirl activist Malala Yousafzai, was named the new leader by the Taliban’s leadership council.
Militants fired AK-47 assault rifles and anti-aircraft guns in the air to celebrate the decision.
Fazlullah replaces Hakimullah Mehsud who was killed in a U.S. drone strike on Friday. Fazlullah is considered a hard-liner and has already rejected any peace talks with the Pakistani government.
Fazlullah’s branch of the Taliban routinely blew up schools with children inside and banned women from being able to go outside without male accompaniment. They would force all men to grow beards or face Sharia law.
