Blasphemy Law & Violence - 3 (Reporter - Dawn News Jan 2011)
Court convicts imam and son for blasphemy AFP | 11th January, 2011
MULTAN: A Pakistan court has jailed a Muslim prayer leader and his 20-year-old
son for life on controversial blasphemy charges http://dawn.com/2011/01/09/more-than-20000-protest-blasphemy-law-change-police/
in the rural centre of the country, court officials said Tuesday. The case
follows the killing of Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer by his
bodyguard last Tuesday, after the outspoken politician called for reform of the
law that was recently used to sentence a Christian woman http://dawn.com/2010/11/12/christian-woman-sentenced-to-death-in-blasphemy-case-2/
to death. Mohammad Shafi, 45, and his son Mohammad Aslam, 20, were arrested in
April last year for removing a poster outside their grocery shop advertising an
Islamic event in a nearby village which allegedly contained Quranic verses.
Judge Mohammad Ayub, heading an anti-terrorism court in the central
Pakistani town of Muzaffargarh, handed down a life sentence to the pair on
Monday, his assistant Faisal Karim told AFP by telephone. The prosecution
alleged organisers of the event, which commemorated the anniversary of the
Prophet Mohammad’s birth, said the pair had “pulled the poster down, tore it
and trampled it under their feet,” Karim said. “The judge sentenced them to
life imprisonment on charges of blasphemy and ordered them to pay a fine of
200,000 rupees ($2,350) each,” he said. Liberal politicians and human rights
activists in Pakistan say the blasphemy law, which carries the death penalty
for the worst offences, is sometimes used to settle personal scores and encourages
extremism.
Defence counsel Arif Gurmani vowed to challenge the verdict in the high
court because “it has been given in haste” and was the result of inter-faith
rivalries, he said. “Both are Muslims. The case is the result of differences
between Deobandi and Barelvi sects of Sunni Muslims,” he said. “Shafi is a
practising Muslim, he is the imam of a mosque and he had recently returned from
a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia…. I am defending them because I am convinced they
are not guilty of blasphemy,” he said. Nobody has been executed in Pakistan for
blasphemy and those given the death penalty have so far had their sentences http://dawn.com/2010/12/12/doctor-arrested-for-blasphemy-police/
overturned or commuted on appeal.
Since Taseer’s assassination, right-wing religious clerics have heaped
praise on his killer and stoked controversy over reform of the law. The
government has said it has no plan to reform the law. http://dawn.com/2010/12/30/govt-appeases-religious-parties-on-blasphemy-law/
The controversy was sparked when former information minister Sherry Rehman
tabled a private member’s bill in November, seeking to abolish the death
penalty for blasphemy. REFERENCE: Court convicts imam and son for blasphemy AFP
| 11th January, 2011 http://dawn.com/2011/01/11/court-convicts-imam-and-son-for-blasphemy/
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