If Zardari gets it into his head to be merciful to this persecuted woman, other heads will roll. “Pakistan president urged not to pardon Christian woman,” by Reza Sayah for CNN, November 24:
Islambad [sic!], Pakistan (CNN) — Two prominent Pakistani Muslim leaders threatened Wednesday to call for nationwide protests if the president pardons a Christian woman sentenced to death for insulting the Muslim prophet Mohammed.
“If the president pardons Asia Bibi, we will raise our voices across the country until he is forced to take his decision back,” nationally known mufti Muneer Ur Rehman said.
Hafiz Ibtisam Elahi Zaheer, a leading cleric in Lahore, said pardoning the woman would be “criminal negligence” and would cause inter-religious tension.
Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer told CNN Tuesday that President Asif Ali Zardari would pardon Bibi if the High Court did not grant her request for mercy.
Bibi, who has been jailed for nearly 15 months, was convicted in a Pakistani court earlier this month of breaking the country’s controversial blasphemy law by insulting Islam’s Prophet Mohammed, a crime punishable with death or life imprisonment, according to Pakistan’s penal code. She was sentenced to death. […]
Prosecutors say Bibi, a 45-year-old field worker, insulted the Prophet Mohammed after she got into a heated argument with Muslim co-workers who refused to drink from a bucket of water she had touched because she is not Muslim.
In a brief news conference at the prison where she’s being held, Bibi said last weekend that the allegations against her are lies fabricated by a group of women who don’t like her.
“We had some differences and this was their way of taking revenge,” she said….