A Christian man and his family are currently shuffling in secrecy from hiding place to hiding place in their native Pakistan after a neighbor accused them of blasphemy for sharing a Bible passage on Facebook, the British Asian Christian Association (BACA) denounced on Wednesday.
The man in question, Haroon Shahzad, was arrested and charged with the crime of blasphemy in Punjab, Pakistan, but the Pakistani justice system dropped charges against him after finding no evidence that the Bible verse in question was intended to offend Muslims, Mohammed, or Islam generally. Pakistan, a Sharia state, punishes blasphemy with prison time and its penal code calls for the execution of those charged with blasphemy against Mohammed himself.
The Pakistani state has never executed anyone convicted of blasphemy. Islamist mobs, however, often organized through loudspeaker announcements from mosques, routinely kill Christians accused of “blasphemy,” from insulting Muhammad to allegedly desecrating the Quran. Accusations of blasphemy often lead to the looting and destruction of entire Christian communities with little police intervention.
In some cases, police arrest Christians accused of blasphemy, allegedly to protect them from street justice. Even on those occasions, cases have occurred where mobs of hundreds of people have stormed the police station, extracted the accused, and lynched them.
According to BACA, which works to aid the minority Christian community in Pakistan, Shahzad shared 1st Corinthians chapter 10: 18–22 on Facebook, which reads:
But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.
Neighbors reportedly took offense at the verse because it was posted a week before Eid al-Adha, known as the “feast of sacrifice.” Muslims often celebrate the holiday by sacrificinganimals for the feast.
“My family has been on the run from the time I was implicated in this false charge and arrested by the police under mob pressure,” Shahzad told Morning Star News, an outlet that covers Christian persecution around the world, in late November. He noted that his family had split up into hiding to avoid being lynched.
No comments:
Post a Comment