Tag Archives: Country: Pakistan

AP: A Pakistani court on Tuesday banned former military ruler Pervez Musharraf from running for public office for the rest of his life, the latest blow since he returned from exile last month to make a political comeback.

Christian Science Monitor: Earlier this month, residents of a Christian neighborhood in Gujranwala did something unprecedented when their settlement was attacked by Muslims: They fought back.

Reuters: Former President Pervez Musharraf fled a courtroom on Thursday after judges ordered his arrest to answer allegations he committed treason in 2007, an ignominious retreat for a man who once dominated Pakistan and had hoped to revive his political fortunes.

AP: When Bindiya Rana, a transgender candidate in Pakistan’s elections, went door to door in the Karachi slum she hopes to represent, few people seemed to care about which gender she identifies with.

Christian Today: Now is not the time to visit Kashmir if you’re a Christian tourist. AsiaNews reports that local Christians—but especially foreigners—in the picturesque but contested Indian state are increasingly in danger of anti-conversion violence.

Gatestone Institute: There is no provision in Pakistan’s blasphemy law to punish a false accuser or a false witness. Since 1990, more than 65 Christians have been killed for “blasphemy;” more than 165 cases are waiting for verdicts.

Christian Post: A Pakistani court has annulled the forced marriage of a 14-year-old Christian girl to her Muslim abductor

MyFoxPhoenix.com: Hundreds of Christians clashed with police across Pakistan on Sunday, a day after a Muslim mob burned dozens of homes owned by members of the minority religious group in retaliation for alleged insults against Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

Detroit Free Press: Police have arrested about 150 people accused of burning dozens of homes belonging to Christians in eastern Pakistan after a non-Muslim was accused of making offensive comments about Islam’s prophet Muhammad, police said Sunday as Christians rallied against the destruction.

Catholic Culture: Rimsha Masih, who had spent 18 months in prison, was freed when an appeals-court judge found insufficient evidence to support the blasphemy charge.

Religion Clause Blog: Presumably the interview related to Rehman’s attempt at that time to get the National Assembly to eliminate the death penalty for blasphemy. Lower courts had refused to register a case against Rehman.

AP: A 15-year-old Pakistani girl shot in the head by the Taliban for promoting girls’ education has been released from a Birmingham hospital to live with her family, doctors said Friday.

Catholic Culture: Five Christian churches, three Hindu temples, and one mosque of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community were attacked in Pakistan in 2012, according to a report prepared by the Pakistani Bishops Conference’s Justice and Peace Commission.

PressTV.com: Just as days for the Pakistan’ general elections are getting nearer, people in Pakistan are struggling for an Islamic system in their country, and in the northwest, tens of thousands of them gathered to hold a ‘Long Live Islam’ conference.

Catholic Culture: A Protestant missionary is in critical condition in a hospital in Lahore, Pakistan, after an apparent murder attempt on December.

AP: A Pakistani court on Tuesday acquitted a Christian girl accused of blasphemy over the burning of the Muslim holy book, her lawyer said.

Google News (AP): They came after dusk and chanted into the night sky “Kill the Hindus, kill the children of the Hindus,” as they smashed religious icons, ripped golden bangles off women’s arms and flashed pistols. It wasn’t the first time that the Hindu temple on the outskirts of Pakistan’s largest city was attacked, and residents here fear it will not be the last.

Christian Post: A pastor in Pakistan has been denied bail after he was accused of blasphemy and arrested by police, who protected him from a mob of angry Muslims.

BBC: A mother and father in Pakistani-administered Kashmir have been arrested for murdering their 15-year-old daughter by dousing her with acid “in the name of an honour”, police say.

AP: One of the two Taliban militants suspected of attacking a teenage girl activist was detained by the Pakistani military in 2009 but subsequently released, intelligence officials said Thursday.

Pakistan Christian Post: On the news of attack on St. Francis of Assisi Parish, Old Haji Camp, Karachi he immediately visit the church. The MPA strongly condemned the today’s attack on Church where cars of Father’s, holy books, doors and windows of the churches smashed to pieces.

Fox News: aliban thugs who shot a teen activist in the head may succeed in scaring Pakistani families out of sending girls to school, but they also may have created a powerful martyr who could turn the public against them, say human rights activists.

AP: A Pakistani teen shot in the head by the Taliban for promoting girls’ education and criticizing militants has arrived in Britain, where she is to get specialized care.

Seattle Times: Pakistani police have opened a blasphemy case against a teenage Christian boy accused of sending derogatory text messages about Islam’s prophet to neighbors in the southern city of Karachi, an official said Friday.

NY Times: On Tuesday, masked Taliban gunmen answered Ms. Yousafzai’s courage with bullets, singling out the 14-year-old on a bus filled with terrified schoolchildren, then shooting her in the head. Two other girls were also wounded in the attack.

Christian Science Monitor: A 14-year-old girl who became a national heroine when she protested the Pakistani Taliban’s ban on education for girls in her home district was in critical condition Tuesday after she was shot in the head as she waited for a ride home from her beloved school, according to officials and witnesses.

AP: Pakistan’s blasphemy laws may be used to punish Muslims suspected of ransacking a Hindu temple, an intriguing twist for a country where harsh laws governing religious insults are primarily used against supposed offenses to Islam, not minority faiths.

Catholic Culture: Angered by the release of a video critical of Muhammad, a mob ransacked and burned down a Lutheran church and other church property in Mardan, a city in northern Pakistan.

CNSNews: Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar told CNN’s “Situation Room” last week that if freedom of speech in the United States provokes people in the Muslim and Arab world to take actions against Americans then “maybe we do need to rethink how much freedom is okay.”

Religion Clause Blog: In Pakistan on Saturday, police told a court that their investigation in the widely followed blasphemy case against a Christian girl, Rimsha Masih, has shown that there is no evidence that the girl has committed blasphemy.

Al Jazeera: US embassy in Islamabad is latest target of around 5,000 demonstrators angry at anti-Islam video made in US.

AP: The apparent collapse of a case against a Christian girl accused of burning pages of a Quran has given a dim ray of hope to critics of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, some of the harshest in the Muslim world.

Australian: PAKISTAN has blocked access to an anti-Islam film as security measures beefed up around US diplomatic missions, following attacks on American consulates and embassies in Libya, Egypt and Yemen.

The Independent: A Christian girl who was detained after being accused of burning pages of the Koran in Pakistan has said she is scared for her life and fears “anyone who might kill us”.

Religion Clause Blog: In Pakistan today, Rimsha Masih, a Christian girl being held on controversial blasphemy charges, was released on 1 million rupees ($10,500 US) bail.

Religion Clause Blog: In Bundesrepublik Deutschland v Y and Z, (EU Ct. Justice, Sept. 5, 2012), the Court of Justice of the European Union interpreted the EU’s directive on the status of refugees in the case of two Pakistani members of the Ahmadiyya community who are seeking asylum in Germany.  As summarized by the Court’s press release . . .

CNSNews: So much for Muslim reverence for the Qur’an. Police in Pakistan are investigating allegations that a Muslim cleric himself tore out pages of Islam’s venerated book and added them to burned garbage in a bid to frame a young Christian girl for supposed “blasphemy.”

Catholic Culture: A strike by lawyers in Pakistan has added further complications to the legal case of Rimsha Masih, the mentally impaired Christian girl who has been jailed since August 16 on blasphemy charges.

SMH.com.au: The Christian girl who was allegedly framed for blasphemy by her local mullah was hailed as a ”daughter of the nation” by one of Pakistan’s most senior Islamic clerics who also vowed to guarantee her safety if she is eventually released from prison.

Religion Clause Blog: According to the New York Times yesterday, a 30-year old Muslim cleric who is at the forefront of those calling for the girl’s prosecution was arrested Saturday on charges of falsifying evidence against her.

NY Daily News: Pakistan’s top Christian politician believes that the discrimination against minorities in a country with a 97 percent Muslim population is a sign that the old feudal caste system has not gone away. He said even if the law were changed, allegations of blasphemy provoke such visceral fury that people would take the law into their own hands.

Dawn.com: The district coordination officer of Mardan on Thursday ordered the arrest of six people for refusing vaccination of their children against polio and creating obstacles to immunisation of other children.

AP: A judge hearing the case of a Pakistani Christian girl accused of blasphemy delayed her bail hearing on Thursday after a lawyer questioned a medical report putting the girl’s age at 14, suggesting the government had tried to influence it.

Pakistan Post: On August 14, when Pakistan was celebrating “Independence Day”, Muqadas Kainat went in fields to pee where she was gang raped and murdered by 5 Muslims and never returned home.

AP: About 300 of the Christians who set up camp in a field outside the capital were evicted from the site Tuesday, and their makeshift church was burned down.

Washington Post: Thus, although Pakistan has a very long way to go in terms of protecting religious minorities within their national borders, it can take a giant step in the right direction by abolishing its overly-abused blasphemy laws and show compassion to people of other religions, something that Islam’s prophet taught us over 1,400 years ago

AP: Pakistan’s top court on Monday gave the country’s prime minister three more weeks to decide whether to obey its order to reopen an old corruption case against the president or face the prospect of being ousted from office like his predecessor.

Washington Post: Amid the conflicting claims, this much is certain: As many as 600 Christians have fled their colony bordering the capital, fearing for their lives, officials said, after a mob last week called for the child to be burned to death as a blasphemer.

Religion Clause Blog: BBC News, CNN and AFP report that in Pakistan last Thursday, police reluctantly arrested a Christian girl for desecrating pages of the Qur’an and took her parents into protective custody after 150 demonstrators demanded action and threatened to burn down Christian homes.

Washington Post: More than 250 Pakistani Hindus have arrived in India over the past two weeks bearing tales of religious persecution, according to Indian border officials, fueling perceptions of growing discrimination against minorities in Pakistan.

Catholic Culture: Rev. Zafar Bhatti, who heads the Jesus World Mission, has been jailed after Muslims complained that he had insulted Islam in text messages.

NY Daily News: Pakistan’s Supreme Court has asked the country’s new prime minister to appear later this month for ignoring a request to ask Swiss authorities to reopen cases against the president. The court had given the prime minister until August 8 to write to Switzerland and last week struck down a law passed by parliament that sought to exempt members of the government from contempt trials.

AP: The court could repeatedly disqualify prime ministers over the issue, undermining the government and forcing an early national.

AP: The U.S. is criticizing allies Afghanistan and Pakistan for poorly defending religious freedom.

Wall Street Journal (via Google): The Pakistani Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday to dismiss Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani signals the unnatural death of another civilian government. While less dramatic than the military variety, this judicial coup—carried out on the pretext that Mr. Gilani refused to pursue corruption charges against President Asif Ali Zardari—perpetuates the cycle of unelected institutions “rescuing” Pakistanis from their own chosen leaders.

AP: Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled that Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gilani is disqualified from office after failing to open a corruption case against the country’s president.

AP: A Pakistani lawyer has filed an appeal against the conviction of a doctor jailed after helping the U.S. find Osama bin Laden.

AP: Pakistani judges are often pressured to convict people accused under the country’s blasphemy laws that call for the death penalty for anyone insulting Islam, a special U.N. representative said Tuesday.

Telegraph: Congressmen on the powerful Senate appropriations committee voted to cut $1 million from the $800 million annual budget for each of the 33 years that Dr Shakeel Afridi has been told he must serve in jail for working with a foreign intelligence agency.

Baptist Press: A court has acquitted a Christian couple of blasphemy charges, overturning their life sentences. The couple’s lawyer, Chaudhry Naeem Shakir, told Compass Direct News that Justice Mazhar Ali Akbar Naqvi of the Lahore High Court accepted the couple’s appeal May 17 because prosecutors failed to prove allegations that 32-year-old Munir Masih and his wife Ruqayya defiled the Quran or insulted Muhammad on Dec. 8, 2008.

The Guardian: On Wednesday a representative of the country’s main spy agency said Afridi had got what he deserved when he was sentenced to 33 years in prison for conspiring against the state, for his role in trying to help the CIA track Osama bin Laden to his hideout in the garrison town of Abbottabad.

Catholic Culture: Chaudhry Irshad Younas, a Pakistani Christian involved in politics, was murdered in Lahore on April 27.

Mail & Guardian: The beheaded body of a kidnapped British doctor working for the International Committee of the Red Cross was found dumped by the roadside on Sunday in the southwestern Pakistan city of Quetta, police and Red Cross officials said.

LA Times: The girls are forced to convert to Islam, rights groups say. In court, a few wives have chosen to stay with their husbands, but families say they were coerced.

BBC: The tradition of marrying a cousin is becoming more entrenched among British-born Pakistanis living in Bradford than it was a generation ago, writes Winifred Robinson.

NY Times: The Supreme Court had intervened in the three cases in recent weeks, “sequestering the women from their parents and their new husbands to consider their future without pressure,” Mr. Masood writes. “The court ruled on Wednesday that all three had freely chosen to remain Muslim.”

AP reports.

Catholic Culture: Rinkel Kumari, who is a Hindu, begged the court not to return her to an Islamic school where she has been detained. “Kill me here, now, in court. But do not send me back,” she pleaded.

NY Times: Hours later, she resurfaced 12 miles away, at the home of a prominent Muslim cleric who phoned her parents with news that distressed them: Their daughter wished to convert to Islam, he said.

AP: It was barely 4 a.m. when 19-year-old Rinkal Kumari disappeared from her home in a small village in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province.

Pakistan Today reports that on Friday a court in the Pakistani city of Kasur imposed a life sentence and a fine equivalent to $2200 (US) for blasphemy on Police Station House Officer Manzarul Haq Shah Jahan.

CNN: Activists presented a petition Tuesday to the United Nations Human Rights Council calling on Pakistan to free a Christian mother of five from being put to death on the charge of blasphemy.

Religion Clause Blog: Sana had converted from Christianity to Islam six months ago and had moved to the village with her two sons. However villagers accused her of still seeing her Christian husband.

News from The Associated Press: Pakistan’s government on Thursday bowed to a long-standing Supreme Court demand to debate whether the president enjoys immunity from a past corruption case, a concession that could help defuse a crisis threatening the U.S.-backed administration.

Telegraph: Pakistan’s Supreme Court began contempt proceedings against the prime minister for failing to re-open a corruption case against the president in a step towards a much feared constitutional coup.