Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are an ongoing human rights abuse, and the case of Asia Bibi ought to be an international scandal. But no one much cares. After all, it isn’t as if anyone is committing something serious like “Islamophobia.”
“This ‘blaspheming’ Christian mother is on death row in Pakistan for drinking from a Muslim’s cup. Now her husband reveals that even if she’s freed the lynch mob has been offered a £60 bounty to kill her,” by Helen Roberts and Taniya Dutta, Mailonline, July 7, 2015:
The husband of a Christian Pakistani mother-of-five sentenced to death simply for drinking from a Muslim’s cup has said he fears locals will beat her to death even if she is acquitted.
Ashiq Masih gave an emotional interview to MailOnline in which he said his family had been ‘broken’ by the pain of living without his wife Asia Bibi, 50, who has been in prison for five years awaiting a death sentence for blasphemy.
Asia is the first woman sentenced to hang under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law, but her husband of 22 years still insists she’s been framed and is begging the Supreme Court to acquit her later this month.
Yet he revealed that even if she is freed, they will never be able to return to their home as clerics want her dead and have put a bounty on her head. They would pay as little as £60 for her to be dead, claimed Ashiq.
A mother of four daughters and one son, Asia was arrested in 2009. Ashiq, 54, worked in the local brick kilns and his wife would go out into the fields near their village, Ittan Wali, in Punjab, to labour as a fruit picker.
On this particular day in June, one woman told Asia to get some water from a nearby well and she used a bowl sitting near by. She had used the bowl on other days but this day was to be different.
Over a Skype interview from a private location in hiding in Pakistan, Ashiq said: ‘A group of women suddenly told her not to drink from the bowl and an argument erupted. My wife will argue back, she is bold, so she stood up for herself.
‘But the women argued and then started mentioning our religion – asking silly questions.’
Asia was abused by the women, saying that as a non-Muslim she was unfit to touch their water bowl.
Ashiq said: ‘We’d been targeted by villagers for a long time and they often taunted us. There had been many arguments over drainage problems and water pumps, always something to fight over.
‘Whenever we said God gave us water to share they would get very angry and warn us not to speak.’
As news of the women’s claims spread, the entire village was in uproar. Asia’s name was announced over loud speakers and she was beaten. Reports claim she was dragged through the streets and had a noose put around her neck.
Ashiq had no idea what was going on while he was at work but when he got home that evening he found Asia bruised and battered from the beating with her clothes torn.
The following day Asia continued as normal as the family were used to such abuse. Asia believed she had done nothing wrong and went to work.
But five days later, her accusers went to the local Maulvi (Muslim cleric) and put forward the blasphemy allegations, saying Asia had spoken against their Prophet Mohammed.
Eventually police came and arrested Asia. For a further 15 days officers visited Ashiq and his children daily.
He said: ‘I had this constant fear that they would arrest my children and me too. If they could arrest Asia for doing nothing then they could arrest us too.’
A month after Asia’s arrest Ashiq and his children went into hiding – and have been on the run since.
They have moved house 15 times and do not go outside without covering their faces, and if they need to travel anywhere they do so after dark.
Since Asia was sentenced to death for blasphemy in 2010, Ashiq now only sees his wife when he can, often travelling for five-and-a-half hours to her jail in Multan, in southern Punjab.
He told MailOnline he just wants his wife home. He misses her smile and cannot sleep knowing she has been locked up an innocent victim.
‘I really love her and miss her presence,’ he said. ‘I cannot sleep at night as I miss her. I miss her smile; I miss everything about her. She is my soul mate. I cannot see her in prison. It breaks my heart. Life has been non-existent without her….
Renee says
I care! I pray for her every day!
Joseph says
I will be praying for her too, and her whole family.
Athiest kafir says
Praying doesn’t help, contacting your congressman or your local church chapter might. Create pressure, Christians are the victims. I’m not a believer but people are people and they are being murdered for thought crimes.
Jae M says
Prayer is powerful and I’ll join you in that prayer. There should be an organization where we could sponsor and bring the persecuted Christians over there to safety and get them out of the barbaric and unjust evil nation they live in. If anyone knows of a such an organization, share the link and change some lives.
dumbledoresarmy says
I also.
And one can write to one’s church leaders and ask for Asia Bibi and her family to be publicly placed on the church’s prayer list; and ask that our church leaders – our bishops and archbishops and such – will publicly speak on her behalf, to our governments, demanding that *they* put pressure on hideous Islamic Pakistan to release her. And we can write to our heads of state and our MPs and we can just keep on loudly reminding them about her.
The point is not to do it just once. All of us have to somehow find the energy to keep on doing it – pressuring our church leaders *and* pressuring our political leaders, demanding that they do the right thing.
Prayer is what will give us strength to keep doing that and not give up. Our prayers may also be what will help carry Asia Bibi and enable her to endure and cling to Christ, no matter what.
Also, let’s remember Daniel in the lions’ den, and the three young men in the fiery furnace, and the deliverance of St Peter from Herod’s prison by an angel (Acts 12: 5017).
Further thought: nothing to stop such of us as are on social media of various kinds, from regularly posting updates on her story and her situation. Because her story – can help to raise awareness of the sheer horribleness of orthodox Islam. Pakistan’s ghastly blasphemy ‘law’ is very sharia-compliant; it is thoroughly Islamic in origin and in practice. It’s all about terrorising and silencing any and all potential critics of Islam, whether within or outside of the death cult. Asia Bibi’s story could help open a lot of eyes. So spread it around. Keep reminding people.
Angemon says
A Christian being uppity, and a woman at that? The muzzies must have been apoplectic with rage.
Donovan Nuera says
Why doesn’t Pope Francis do more to publicize her plight and of other Pakistani Christians? What about Nobel laureate Malala helping out (then again most of Pakistan wants her killed off too)? I hope international furor grows against that savage and backwards land.
Charli Main says
Pope Francis is to busy discussing with Muslims, the number of minarets that should be added to Saint Peter´s in Rome. Interfaith dialogue and making the Muslims feel that they are a part of Europe etc etc
Lioness says
And too busy discussing “climate change”, so not much time left to worry about Christians suffering in Muslim countries.
Roy C says
Right on Lioness – The only place where the Catholic church has any future is in the loony left third world and failing socialists states like Argentina where this numbskull was plucked from so we shouldn’t expect anything better from this committed leftist. If you even mention this Pakistani outrage or any other Muslim atrocity in my local paper well organized far left democrats quickly set upon you finding you guilty of both islamophobia
and bigotry. I’ve given up since it seems that most Americans fall into one of two groups – either misguided liberals who will defend Islamists at all cost or the rest who really don’t care about any of these issues.
dumbledoresarmy says
All Catholics and for that matter other Christians should be writing to Pope Francis and *demanding* that he confront the Pakistani ambassador – to the Vatican? is there one? there will be a Pakistani ambassador to Italy – on the subject of Asia Bibi. It should be done publicly.
The Pope could declare an intention of visiting Pakistan, in order to give succour and encouragement to the Catholic faithful.
He could state that when he does visit, he wants to be able to visit Asia Bibi in prison, to offer her comfort and give her the Eucharist. He should make this request loudly, clearly and publicly, addressing it directly to the Pakistani head of state, so that the government of Pakistan, if they refuse the Pope’s request, can be seen by the whole world to be refusing…and any sane person will then see just how mean, petty, vicious and horrible it is – total bullying – that Pakistan is locking this poor woman up in jail and preventing her Christian pastor from visiting her to give her Holy Communion.
cheesecake says
A christian woman accused of an insult to Islam could be killed in pakistan. Yet here in Britain Muslim men rape thousands of British girls and get aslap on the wrist if caught, the Christian church in Europe won’t do a thing to help persecuted Christians for fear of being non PC or racist.
Britain should take in all the Pakistani Christians and at the same time deport all the Pakistani Muslims back to Pakistan.
John Doe says
“Britain should take in all the Pakistani Christians and at the same time deport all the Pakistani Muslims back to Pakistan”
Cheesecake, I love your idea. That sound like all the world’s problem’s solved!!!! I just wish that would be easy as we speak. The savages wants us dead gone and our western lands for themselves. The would not go back, but here they are menaces!!!! I still wake up sometimes thinking all this present madness is just a dream !!!!!
nacazo says
If I had my way Pakistan would not get a penny until Asia Bibi is freed.
Free Asia Bibi now!!!
dumbledoresarmy says
That is exactly what the British Pakistani Christian Association have been saying to the UK government for some time now.
They want UK government ‘aid’ to horrible Islamic Pakistan to be made conditional upon decent treatment of non-Muslim minorities. The message to Pakistan would then be: you treat the minorities like sh*t? – then all that lovely ‘aid’ will stop.
(Actually, all official governmental infidel ‘aid’ to mohammedan entities should stop, anyway, and never be resumed. The mohammedans view it as either Tribute or as Jizya in any case; as something they, as the lordly rulers of the whole world, are entitled to receive from infidels. They need to learn different, fast.)
Jack Diamond says
The crimes against this woman (and her family) should outrage the world. As should all the injustice and cruelties heaped upon the small number of Christians in Pakistan by the Muslims of Pakistan.
Should, not that it would, compel the U.S. government to intervene and secure her release and asylum. Maybe Canada can do what it did for Rimsha Masih. It’s intolerable that nothing has been done after all this time and after what she has endured.
Another Christian, Younis Masih, just spent 8 years in prison before finally being released in 2013. He was accused of blasphemy against Muhammed after he complained about noise levels at an Islamic religious ceremony in his neighborhood. Even though free he remains in hiding…because once accused of “blasphemy” his blood is halal for any Muslim to kill him. These extrajudicial killings are more to the point than than the legal death penalty. Here are 51 cases of people accused of blasphemy being killed extrajudicial or dying in custody (1994-2011): http://crss.pk/downloads/Reports/Special-Posts/Blasphemy%20Law%20Extra%20Judicial%20Killings.pdf
There are far too many examples like that of Samuel Masih.
2003: “Samuel Masih, a Christian, was arrested for allegedly defiling a mosque by spitting on its wall.
“While in police custody Masih contracted tuberculosis and was sent to Gulab Devi Chest Hospital for treatment. He was killed by a police officer, Faryad Ali, who was one of the guards escorting him. He used a hammer to kill him in the presence of other officers and claimed that it was his duty as a Muslim to kill Masih.”
This is how the death penalty for blasphemy is actually carried out in Pakistan.
2008 “In April, Jagdesh Kumar, 25, was beaten to death by Muslim workers in a factory located in Karachi. He was accused of making blasphemous remarks.”
2009: “Punjab police arrested a labourer along with four students belonging to Ahmaddiya community. They were accused of writing prophet’s name on walls a Sunni mosque’s washroom.
Two Christians, both elderly men from Faisalabad, Punjab, were acquitted by the Lahore High Court in April.
Following the alleged desecration, an angry mob torched 75 houses owned by Christians. At least seven Christians were torched alive during the riots.”
7 Christians, collectively guilty, killed for blasphemy.
2012: “A 35-year-old man detained in a lock-up in a Quran desecration case was beaten to death and his body was torched by a lynch mob who stormed the Rajo Deero police station.
“Officials said over 1,000 people from Sita village and its surroundings attacked the police station at 8am to take out from the lock-up the man who had been handed over to the police some hours earlier by Memon Masjid area residents while accusing him of setting fire to the Quran.”
http://www.dawn.com/news/750512/timeline-accused-under-the-blasphemy-law
The stories out of this Islamic hellhole are unfortunately without end…and only comparable to similar Islamic hellholes elsewhere on this globe who have but one thing in common–Islam.
Edward says
Mrs. Asia Bibi will be released and survive all threats to her life….for she adheres to God’s virtue of Courage to defend her Christian religion.
Revelation 21:8
But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars–they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
Matthieu Baudin says
I seems as if our leaders have abandoned us. During the cold war prisoners of conscience had their cases brought up in negotiations of all sorts and the press issued statements to that effect. Today’s prisoners of conscience are wilfully ignored, left unmentioned and allowed to face the gallows without a murmur of protest or a show of indignant rage. Protest is now almost solely in the hands of relatively small community groups.
Pork Rind Addict says
This proves it is a supremacist ideology. Mix that with the fact that it is terroristic and to add the cherry on top that it views suicide terror as a good thing (because you have the 72 virgins waiting for you) and you have the most dangerous and abominable ideology in the history of man.
BC says
This very similar to what happened to negroes in the US southern states if they dared to talk back to a white person. I slavery times they were mercilessly flogged for it as of course a slave was too valuable to kill
Ed says
Can anyone explain to me why reporters, interviewers and the media in general never ask the hard hitting questions and demand answers. 200,000 British muslims turned out to march against Israel, yet not one to march against the 7/7 bombings. Why are the British muslim community not far more vocal in condemning all the horrendous acts around the world? Is the alarming conclusion that many secretly condone it? There’s no lack of motivation for to complain about everything else they do not agree with. About time we stopped sleep walking to disaster and got a little tougher. I am sick of the tough questions being side stepped and the Islamic representative being as slippery as an eel.
The normal, sane rational human beings need to form a voice and say ‘enough is enough’ and turn back the tide of this descent to middle aged barbarity based on fairy tales and twisted warped logic. They blame Israel for taking land whilst watch Isis butcher their way to a land grab without so much as a ‘not in my name’ march or protest.
fwyion jlock says
It is a story of total insanity. I signed the protest petition half a year ago, and I was so hoping that she would be released! pakistan are the worlds most fanatic muslim country in the world!!! pakistanis deserve nothing but hate and hate back, they are so vile and primitive, they don’t deserve to be on this planet!!
I hope Asia Bibi will seek asylum in a western country – they must release her!! – I know western countries will have her as a citizen!!
FREE ASIA BIBI!!!!
shams78 says
Christians in Pakistan are descendants of Hindu Dalits (untouchables) who were lured into converting to Christianity by missionaries during British rule with the hopes of escaping the caste system. Except that they were still dalits and still treated like untouchables. Converting to a different religion doesn’t change your caste status. There are Hindu dalits, Christian dalits, and Muslim dalits (Arzal) who are all treated like crap by their higher caste coreligionists (Brahmins and Ashraf).
There is a caste system even among the 2,000 year old St. Thomas Syriac rite Orthodox Christians of Kerala in Southern India, the upper Caste St. Thomas Christians claim to be descended from upper caste Hindu Brahmins converted by St. Thomas, while they discriminate against low caste untouchable Christians.
Hindu Brahmins lord over the lower caste and untouchable Hindu Dalits, and Muslim noble Ashraf lord over the lower caste Muslim Ajlaf and untouchable Arzal.
Since Pakistani Christians are all descendants of converted Dalit Hindu untouchables, they are of the lowest in the caste system and a minority religion. They are very poor due to their historic untouchable origin and will get treated like untouchables.
fwyion jlock says
To shams78: Thanks for the info.!
shams78 says
The categories Aljaf and Arzal exist only in South Asia though, but Ashraf (aristocrats, nobility) are found throughout the Muslim world, because it refers to people like descendants of the Prophet.
Jack Diamond says
sure, and Christian minorities aren’t treated like this anywhere else in the Muslim world
so it’s not an Islam-thing at all…(sarcasm indicated).
Champ says
“the Prophet.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You mean false prophet, and prophet should be spelled with a lowercase ‘p’, dontcha know…
And that pervert certainly isn’t MY prophet! That evil perp is burning in hell.
Wow you’re a lost cause serving an evil cause: islam.
Stephanie Anderson says
When she is released – there is a safe place for her – please contact us if it is at all possible to get her to the U.S. with her family…
fwyion jlock says
Great! U.S., European countries, she can come!!