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.
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.”