Tag: Blasphemy

Video mocking IS causes riots in Egypt

April 26, 2015 Egypt Blasphemy, Copts, Gad Younan, Islamic State

An April 17 ‘reconciliation meeting’ in Al-Nasriyah village in Upper Egypt, where Christians announce a local teacher, Gad Younan, will leave town and not return.World Watch Monitor When an Egyptian teacher filmed five Coptic Christian secondary school students impersonating terrorists from the so-called Islamic State, the boys could be . . . Read More

No future in Pakistan as minority woman

April 10, 2015 Pakistan Blasphemy, Easter, Islamic extremism, Lahore, Minorities, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan, Women

Pakistan’s prime minister promised to provide equal rights for people of all religions in a speech over the Easter weekend. Nawaz Sharif said: “My government is committed to safeguarding the fundamental rights, safety, honour, life and property of all minority communities”. He added that minorities were granted “equal rights and . . . Read More

Asia Bibi made honorary Paris citizen

March 20, 2015 Pakistan Asia Bibi, Blasphemy, Pakistan, Prophet Muhammad, Women

Asia Bibi, the first Christian woman to be sentenced to death under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, has been awarded an honorary citizenship of Paris by the city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo. The mayor’s statement said receiving the award is a “rare distinction granted to the world’s most emblematic defenders of human rights. . . . Read More

Charges relaxed for murderer of Asia Bibi defender

March 9, 2015 Pakistan Asia Bibi, Blasphemy, Mumtaz Qadri, Pakistan, Prophet Muhammad, Salmaan Taseer, Women

When Mumtaz Qadri confessed to the 2011 murder of Pakistani politician Salman Taseer, he said he did it because the Punjab governor had supported a Christian woman, Aasiya Noreen (also known as Asia Bibi), facing the death penalty for blasphemy. Qadri, who was Taseer’s bodyguard, was himself sentenced to death, . . . Read More

Fixing Pakistan’s ‘broken’ blasphemy laws

March 8, 2015 Pakistan Asia Bibi, Blasphemy, Minorities, Pakistan, Pakistan Ulema Council, Rimsha Masih

Al-Jazeera at Pakistan’s volatile religious politics through the eyes of two Muslims trying to reform the country’s notorious anti-blasphemy laws. Attorney Saif-ul-Malook, for whom Aasiya Noreen (also known as Asia Bibi) is the latest of several clients he has defended against charges of offending Islam, lives in daily fear of an . . . Read More

Life in Islamabad’s Christian slum

February 11, 2015 Pakistan Blasphemy, Children, Education, Islamabad, Pakistan

A makeshift ‘tent city’ on the outskirts of Islamabad, which has become home to Christians who’ve left Pakistan’s capital city in fear after strings of blasphemy allegations and killings, is the subject of a new photo essay by the Associated Press. Christians are shown living in simple cement-block homes or . . . Read More

Threatened Asia Bibi family make fresh appeal

February 4, 2015 Pakistan Asia Bibi, Blasphemy, Pakistan

The husband of Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian woman on death row for nearly five years for blasphemy, has spoken about how the family’s lives are under constant threat. The law has “destroyed our lives”, Ashiq Masih told the BBC. “We get death threats. We can’t stay in one place . . . Read More

Bureaucratic delays put Egyptian convert’s appeal at risk

January 29, 2015 Egypt Apostasy, Blasphemy, Egypt, Mohammed Hegazy

After weeks of judicial runaround, Egyptian lawyer Karam Ghobrial has managed to find and visit his client, Egypt’s most publicly-known Christian convert Mohammed Hegazy, in Cairo’s Tora Prison. The whereabouts of Hegazy, the first Egyptian Muslim to, in 2007, fight a legal case to change his religious identity to Christian, . . . Read More

Pakistani murder trial may move to military court

January 20, 2015 Pakistan Al-Qaeda, Blasphemy, Islamic extremism, Pakistan, Prophet Muhammad, Shahbaz Bhatti

On Jan. 15, Pakistan’s police requested the high-profile murder trial of Minority Minister Shahbaz Bhatti be moved to a newly formed military court. Bhatti, a Christian, was shot dead in front of his Islamabad home in March 2011 for demanding reformation of Pakistan’s blasphemy law, an extremely sensitive topic in . . . Read More

Three more cases in which Pakistani Christians accused of blasphemy

December 11, 2014 Pakistan Asia Bibi, Barelvi, Blasphemy, Kasur, Lahore, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan, Sharia

A brick kiln in Pakistan where 24 bonded-labourer Christian families narrowly escaped a mob attack in December 2014. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

Three more cases of blasphemy accusations have emerged in Pakistan, even after a Christian couple’s beating to death and burning in a brick kiln after allegations of blasphemy horrified the world, including the metropolitan elite in the country. The Christian couple were killed over suspicions of desecrating the Qur’an on . . . Read More

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