A few things have happened recently pertaining to the Asia Bibi case, so I decided to make a thread on them. Especially since it seems like more might be happening in the near future.
For those of you who aren't aware, Asia Bibi (aka Aasiya Noreen) is a Christian Pakistani woman who has been the subject of an ongoing blasphemy trial for the past 7 years. From the Wiki article
Tl;dr- A Christian woman in an overwhelmingly Muslim country gets arrested and sentenced to death for daring to drink from the same well as Muslims and then defending herself and her faith when they attacked her.
The case is very notable for resulting in the assassinations of two politicians, Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti. Both Taseer and Bhatti publicly supported Asia and condemned Pakistan's archaic and backwards blasphemy law, which is frequently abused to settle disputes (non-Muslims are particularly vulnerable, but many Muslims are targeted as well). Taseer in particular attracted a lot of attention due to being a governor and a Sunni Muslim (Bhatti was a Christian). He was assassinated by his own bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri. Qadri was executed for his crime in February of this year, which resulted in massive backlash; literally tens of thousands of people protested and marched and rioted in honor of Qadri, whom they see as a "martyr" who did his duty of protecting Islam.
Asia was sentenced to death for blasphemy, and she has been undergoing appeals for years now. Her case was supposed to receive its final hearing this month, but it was once again postponed. The future of her case appears to be uncertain after a senior judge who was to preside over her appeal suddenly resigned, most likely due to fear of being assassinated like Tasser and Bhatti. And just yesterday, a mob of hundreds took part in coordinated mass demonstrations across Pakistan, chanting slogans and holding banners as they called for the death of Asia Bibi.
And that's the real tragedy of this case. As abhorrent and inhumane as it seems to us (and most of the world) to keep a mother of two on death row just because she might have said something negative about Muhammad, tons of people in Pakistan wholeheartedly support it; the ones who don't are kept in line by the extremists.
So yeah, fuck Pakistan.
For those of you who aren't aware, Asia Bibi (aka Aasiya Noreen) is a Christian Pakistani woman who has been the subject of an ongoing blasphemy trial for the past 7 years. From the Wiki article
Aasiya Noreen was born and raised in Ittan Wali, a small, rural village in the Sheikhupura District of Punjab, Pakistan,[6][7] thirty miles outside of Lahore.[8] Christians in the district, and elsewhere in Pakistan, usually have lower class occupations such as being cleaners and sweepers.[8] Noreen, who is a Roman Catholic,[9] worked as a farmhand in Sheikhupura to support her family.[9] She married Ashiq Masih, a brick laborer who had three children from a previous marriage,[10] and had two more children with him.[11][12] Noreen and her family were the only Christians in the village.[13]Before her incarceration, she had been repeatedly urged by her fellow workers to convert to Islam.[14]
In June 2009, Noreen was harvesting falsa berries with a group of other farmhands in a field in Sheikhupura.[9] She was asked at one point to fetch water from a nearby well;[4] she complied but stopped to take a drink with an old metal cup she had found lying next to the well.[10][15] A neighbor of Noreen, who had been involved in a running feud with Noreen's family about some property damage,[1] saw her and angrily told her that it was forbidden for a Christian to drink water from the same utensil from which Muslims drink, and some of the other workers considered her to be unclean because she was a Christian.[10] Some arguments ensued.[16] Noreen recounts that when they made derogatory statements about her religion, she responded, "I believe in my religion and in Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for the sins of mankind. What did your Prophet Mohammed ever do to save mankind?"[10][15]
Later, some of the workers complained to a cleric that Noreen insulted Muhammad. What they accused her of saying, which would be stated in the later court verdict, differs from her version.[17] A mob came to her house, beating her and members of her family before she was rescued by the police.[4] The police initiated an investigation about her remarks, resulting in her arrest under Section 295 C of the Pakistan Penal Code.[3] She subsequently was imprisoned for over a year before being formally charged.
Tl;dr- A Christian woman in an overwhelmingly Muslim country gets arrested and sentenced to death for daring to drink from the same well as Muslims and then defending herself and her faith when they attacked her.
The case is very notable for resulting in the assassinations of two politicians, Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti. Both Taseer and Bhatti publicly supported Asia and condemned Pakistan's archaic and backwards blasphemy law, which is frequently abused to settle disputes (non-Muslims are particularly vulnerable, but many Muslims are targeted as well). Taseer in particular attracted a lot of attention due to being a governor and a Sunni Muslim (Bhatti was a Christian). He was assassinated by his own bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri. Qadri was executed for his crime in February of this year, which resulted in massive backlash; literally tens of thousands of people protested and marched and rioted in honor of Qadri, whom they see as a "martyr" who did his duty of protecting Islam.
Asia was sentenced to death for blasphemy, and she has been undergoing appeals for years now. Her case was supposed to receive its final hearing this month, but it was once again postponed. The future of her case appears to be uncertain after a senior judge who was to preside over her appeal suddenly resigned, most likely due to fear of being assassinated like Tasser and Bhatti. And just yesterday, a mob of hundreds took part in coordinated mass demonstrations across Pakistan, chanting slogans and holding banners as they called for the death of Asia Bibi.
And that's the real tragedy of this case. As abhorrent and inhumane as it seems to us (and most of the world) to keep a mother of two on death row just because she might have said something negative about Muhammad, tons of people in Pakistan wholeheartedly support it; the ones who don't are kept in line by the extremists.
So yeah, fuck Pakistan.
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