Shafqat Emmanuel’s wife Shagufta Kausar is also in jail and on death row. Their cruel sentence resulted from a Muslim cleric accusing the illiterate Christian couple of sending blasphemous texts.
It has become commonplace for Muslims in Pakistan to abuse, attack, imprison, and even murder Christians. The mere worth of Christians is diminished globally, as this abuse is met with indifference. This coincides with the fact that the lives of Christians in Islamic countries such as Pakistan are already worth less than those of Muslims.
Meanwhile, Western leaders allow Islamic blasphemy law into their own countries, marketed as prohibitions or taboos on “hate speech” that supposedly victimizes Muslims. Westerners who are deemed to have insulted Islam or Muslims are seen as “Islamophobic.”
“Convicted of blasphemy, Christian couple endure death row misery in Pakistan,” by Kamran Chaudhry, Union of Catholic Asian News, May 13, 2021:
Saiful Malook was disturbed after seeing Shafqat Emmanuel, a Christian convicted of blasphemy, in Faisalabad’s District Jail.
“The whole flesh on his backside has withered due to bed sores. His entire body is marred with wounds. The poor fellow is not taken to hospital,” said the Muslim lawyer.
“His children couldn’t continue their education. His wife is in depression. She started crying frantically during our meeting last year. ‘I will die here,’ she said. Asia Bibi stayed in the same cell.”
Catholic woman Bibi was acquitted of blasphemy in 2018 after spending eight years on death row in Pakistan.
Malook, who successfully defended Bibi and had her blasphemy conviction overturned in the Supreme Court, is contesting the charges against Shafqat Emmanuel and his wife Shagufta Kausar in Lahore High Court.
The Christian couple were arrested in 2013 and sentenced to hang in Toba Tek Singh town of Punjab province in addition to a fine of 200,000 rupees (US$1,310) after being convicted of sending text messages insulting the Prophet Muhammad.
Sentencing went ahead despite it transpiring that a SIM card presented as evidence by police was bogus. The case was filed by Mohammed Hussain, a prayer leader at a mosque in Gojra Punjab province who alleged that the couple had sent religiously offensive text messages to him and other Muslims.
The couple pleaded their innocence, maintaining they were illiterate and could not write the text messages that were written in English. They also said the SIM card was bought using Kausar’s stolen identity card.
They have been jailed separately since 2014, with Shafqat in Faisalabad and Shagufta in the Women Prison Multan, the only jail for females in Punjab province.
According to a 2014 medical assessment, Shafqat was diagnosed as a paraplegic and suffered from large pressure sores.
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sasanka ghosh says
lost cause . Barbarians rule
Walter Sieruk says
This shows and even proves that the old saying must be true. Which is that “Evil is always looking for an excuse.”
Infidel says
Last week, when RS had his video discussion w/ 2 Indians and the question of Christians in Pakistan was brought up, I continued to watch after the RS segment ended. Actually, Mr Ratanu kept switching b/w Hindi and English, so it would have been hard for anyone not familiar w/ both languages to follow, but one thing he made clear in that conversation: he wants to get every last Hindu, Sikh and Christian out of that country. Already most of them have hightailed Afghanistan
I wish his organization Nimettekam luck in this project: like the Israeli exercises to evacuate Jews from Yemen and Ethiopia in the 80s, once this one becomes a success, we won’t have to put up w/ these horror stories from Pakistan and Afghanistan
Uma Maheswar Nakka says
Very sad and awful
Nikhil Manek says
So you see, if non muslims, that is christians, sikhs, hindus are allowed to come to india in order to avoid persecution in pakistan, than that’s a good thing. They say, why a similar offer wasn’t made to muslims because they are the oppressors here. Then they say muslims of india will be thrown out, but that’s absurd, because the law doesn’t apply to them..