Pakistan’s blasphemy law is an easy way for Muslims to victimize Christians with whom they have a dispute. “Woman seeks lumber, gets jailed: Nation’s blasphemy law criticized for ambiguities, improper use,” from WorldNetDaily.com, with thanks to all who sent this in:
A woman in Pakistan went down the road from her family’s construction supply business to check on some materials that had been borrowed, and returned with a charge of blasphemy against her, according to reports.
Martha Bibi, who lives in the small village of Kot Nanka Singh in Pakistan’s Kasur District, was taken into custody after she went to a team of Muslims who are building a mosque and asked about the construction materials the group had borrowed.
The report comes from the international Christian human rights group International Christian Concern, as well as Assist News Service.
ICC said about six weeks ago, Martha and her husband, Butta Masih, loaned the Muslims some bamboos and logs for the project. But no one returned the equipment, or gave any notice of when that might happen.
“When Martha went to ask what had happened to the building materials, she got into a fierce argument with a shopowner near the mosque, but did not even mention religion. The woman she argued with told her husband, Mohammad Ramzan, that Martha blasphemed the prophet Muhammad,” ICC said in a statement.
“Ramzan was so enraged that he gathered his neighbors and stirred them into a frenzy to march on Martha’s home,” the ICC continued.
Her husband reported the “large, furious mob” assembled and was marching toward his home so he and his wife fled, hiding in the home of a friendly neighbor. Accompanied and supported by police, the mob reached Butta and Martha’s house late at night, and contacted Butta’s parents, who had remained there.
“The fuming mob threatened my parents that our house would be gutted out if they had not handed us to them,” the ICC report quoted Butta as saying.
The ICC said for hours, the mob threatened the family and searched the home, and finally dispersed so that the Butta and Martha could return.
“A relative of their neighbor Rashid came and said that the people wanted to burn Martha. He offered to speak for her innocence, but when they left to go speak to the leaders of the mob, the police accosted her and took her away in their patrol wagon,” the ICC reported.