Cleric Puts Price On Head Of Pakistani Christian Woman

[dalsingh101]

Cleric puts price on head of Pakistani woman

Monday 6 December 2010 15.16 GMT

The daughters of Pakistani Christian woman Aasia Bibi pose with an image of their mother. Bibi has been sentenced to death for blasphemy following an argument with her neighbours.

Fears are growing for the safety of Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman condemned to death under Pakistani blasphemy laws, after a religious preacher and a major newspaper issued a call for ordinary Muslims to behead her if the courts do not carry out the hanging.

A Punjabi court found the mother of five guilty of insulting the prophet Muhammad last month, acting on complaints from her Muslim neighbours. She was the first woman to be sentenced to hang under a harsh 1980s law that is frequently abused to persecute minorities.

The case has inflamed public opinion, drawing protests from both the liberal minority and religious extremists.

On Friday the imam of Peshawar's oldest mosque, Maulana Yousaf Qureshi, offered a 500,000 rupee (£3,800) reward to anyone who killed Bibi if the court fails to hang her.

The call to violence was endorsed by Nawa-i-Waqt, Pakistan's second largest selling newspaper, which yesterday hailed Qureshi as a leader of Muslims. "The punishment handed down to Aasia Bibi will be carried out in one manner or the other," the Urdu daily said.

The extremists have been supported by conservative judges in the Lahore high court, which last week blocked an offer by President Asif Ali Zardari to pardon the woman. Legal experts have questioned the legality of the order.

Meanwhile human rights activists fear Bibi could be killed before her case can come to appeal. At least 10 Pakistanis accused of blasphemy have been killed while their cases were being heard since 1990. In 1997 a Lahore judge who acquitted a teenage boy of blasphemy was gunned down in his chambers.

Given the price on Bibi's head, supporters worry she could be killed in Sheikhupura jail, where she is being held, or on the steps of the courtroom. "She is in grave danger because her case has become a lightning rod for a confrontation with extremists," said Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch.

Initially sympathetic to Bibi's plight, the government has all but abandoned her to extremist forces. The president dithered on his initial offer of a pardon until it was blocked in court. Last week he appointed a hardline Islamist to head the Council of Islamic Ideology – a body that determines whether Pakistan's laws are in conformity with Islam.

Last week the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, distanced himself from election promises by the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party to repeal laws that discriminate against minorities.

Efforts by two senior PPP members, Punjab governor Salman Taseer and former information minister Sherry Rehman, to support Bibi have met with active hostility from within their own camp. Rehman's proposed watering down of the blasphemy laws is opposed by her own law minister, Babar Awan, who last week announced that "no one should think of finishing" the blasphemy law.

While Pakistan's blasphemy laws are rooted in a British colonial law from 1860, the failure to repeal them underscores the country's very modern crisis of governance.

In a report on Pakistan's creaking criminal justice system published today, the International Crisis Group called for the repeal of all laws that "provide legal cover to the persecution of religious and sectarian minorities".

Meanwhile the woman at the centre of the furore is clinging to the hope that an appeal will spare her life. She says she was convicted on hearsay, following a row in a field over a glass of water. In a Kafka-esque twist her accusers refuse to specify the alleged blasphemy, saying it would only compound the insult to Islam.

Even if Bibi is acquitted, however, it would be impossible for her to return home. Her family has fled its home after receiving numerous death threats – "they say, 'we'll deal with you if we get our hands on you'," her husband told the BBC – while Muslim prayer leaders in her Punjabi village have vowed to kill her if a judge sets her free.

Her local imam told a reporter that he "cried with joy" after she was sentenced to hang.

Human rights activists say that, if free, Bibi will have to flee into exile, and Canada and Italy have already offered asylum.

But first Pakistan's troubled judicial system must run its course. The next hearing is scheduled for late December.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/06/cleric-pakistani-christian-woman-blasphemy

Edited December 6, 2010 by dalsingh101