An update on this story from the Khaleej Times, with thanks to Sr. Soph:
LAHORE — Clerics refused to lead the funeral prayer of an alleged blasphemer, Abdul Sattar Gopang alias Tari, terming it a “great sin”.Gopang was stabbed to death outside the Muzaffargarh district court where he was to attend the hearing of a blasphemy case against him. He was being escorted by a police team when he was attacked by two assailants — Muhammad Imran Waheed, a student of B.Sc., and Muhammad Iqbal Khan, a vendor. The police latter arrested both the accused. However, Gopang’s family hired a religious seminary teacher to perform his funeral rites. Only 35 people of Gopang’s family attended the funeral. A large police contingent was deployed in the area to deal with any untoward incident.
The Tehrike Khatme Nabuwat has offered its full support for the accused and praised them for their action. “We will provide full financial and legal support to Waheed and Khan. We are proud of them for accomplishing this noble task,” said a spokesman of the Tehrike Khatme Nabuwat, Maulana Muhammad Siddique. The accused were shifted to Muzaffargarh District Jail. DPO Muzaffargarh Rai Tahir has suspended Inspector Fida Hussain and City Police Station SHO Jam Muhammad Saleem for negligence of duty.
Even if one believed the lie that there are only a few "radicals" out there committing the Islamic violence, once again we see that the religious leaders defend the violence and encourage it.
You would think that if the vast majority of Muslims were "moderates", interested in freedom from religious tyranny, that they would have swarmed this funeral in droves, to send a message that this sort of religious intolerance and religious violence will not be tolerated.
But the "moderates" didn't show, they won't show, because they are phantoms, they exist only in the shadowy recesses of our leaders' minds.
Guilty until proven dead.
Then, still guilty.
It would have been nice for the man's family, if these people could have forgotten their fanaticisms and their egos for long enough to say a prayer over his body, since his relatives would have thought that proper. But no, that would be asking too much.
I don't know that I believe in God, but rather than that one and his servants, I'll take this one and his:
Kierkegaard on the text "Love covereth a multitude of sins" ... but not in Pakistan, apparently.
Ah yes, the religion of piss.
Lee Harvey Oswald's family found a minister, a Rev. Saunders, to stand at the gravesite and watch as his coffin was lowered into the ground, saying: "Even Lee Oswald deserved Christian burial".
Because there had been no trial. And, in America, you are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
But I guess being accused of burning Koran pages in Islam is more serious than being accused of assassinating a president in the U.S.
Paper is more sacred than life.
Shameless.
Madness.
In any decent faith, once one is dead, it is the norm to gloss over the sins that he committed in his lifetime, and not carry the grudge any further. Of course, there are exceptions - Adolf Eichmann's remains being cremated and scattered over the Mediterranean, so that there would be no shrine for neo-Nazis to pay homage to, or be inspired by.
However, in Islam, death isn't enough - bodies need to be defiled. We saw this when the US contractors were hanged on the bridge at Fallujah, and how the bodies of Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, Paul Johnson et al had to be discovered, instead of being honorably (albeit anonymously) returned to the US authorities. While this lack of respect for the dead in Islam is completely compatible to the lack of respect for life in Islam, it ought to be another compelling reason why Islam should not be recognized as a religion.
Since Gopang "blasphemed", his family might want to consider cremating him in an electrical crematorium, so that they don't get into an ugly row with Islamic authorities, and then handle his remains as deemed fit. I doubt there are any "secular" gravesites in Pakistan, despite all the dead infidels there.
As I understand it, Islam does not allow women to be present when the body is interred. This always struck me as a particularly nasty little aspect of the religion.