Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi 'has price on her head'

Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi '
has price on her head'

By Orla Guerin BBC News, Punjab province
Asia Bibi is said to be one of dozens of innocent people accused of blasphemy every year

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11930849
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Ashiq Masih has the look of a hunted man - gaunt, anxious and exhausted. Though he is guilty of nothing, this Pakistani labourer is on the run - with his five children. His wife, Asia Bibi, has been sentenced to death for blaspheming against Islam. That is enough to make the entire family a target. They stay hidden by day, so we met them after dark. Mr Masih told us they move constantly, trying to stay one step ahead of the anonymous callers who have been menacing them.

"I ask who they are, but they refuse to tell me," he said. "They say 'we'll deal with you if we get our hands on you'. Now everyone knows about us, so I am hiding my kids here and there. I don't allow them to go out. Anyone can harm them," he added.
Ashiq Masih says his daughters still cry for their mother and ask if she will be home in time for Christmas.

He insists that Asia Bibi is innocent and will be freed, but he worries about what will happen next.
"When she comes out, how she can live safely?" he asks.
"No one will let her live. The mullahs are saying they will kill her when she comes out."
Asia Bibi, an illiterate farm worker from rural Punjab, is the first woman sentenced to hang under Pakistan's controversial blasphemy law.

'Old score' As well as the death penalty hanging over her, Asia Bibi now has a price on her head.
A radical cleric has promised 500,000 Pakistani rupees (£3,700; $5,800) to anyone prepared to "finish her". He suggested that the Taliban might be happy to do it. Asia Bibi's troubles began in June 2009 in her village, Ittan Wali, a patchwork of lush fields and dusty streets. Hers was the only Christian household. She was picking berries alongside local Muslim women, when a row developed over sharing water. Days later, the women claimed she had insulted the Prophet Muhammad. Soon, Asia Bibi was being pursued by a mob.

"In the village they tried to put a noose around my neck, so that they could kill me," she said in a brief appearance outside her jail cell.

Anarchy threat
Asia Bibi says she was falsely accused to settle an old score. That is often the case with the blasphemy law, critics say.

"If the law punishes someone for blasphemy, and that person is pardoned, then we will also take the law in our hands”
(Qari Mohammed Salim Imam)

Iraq’s Christians Still Under Siege

Iraq’s Christians Still Under Siege

Nina Shea  Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom
http://religiousfreedomnews.blogspot.com/
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Iraqi Christianity has suffered another catastrophic blow that is likely to hasten the church’s wholesale flight from the country: Last evening, al-Qaeda suicide bombers laid siege to Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church in Baghdad during Sunday Mass while 120 local Chaldean Catholics were worshiping inside. The Washington Post reports that 42 Iraqi worshipers were killed, along with seven Iraqi rescue commandos. Among the dead are two priests, Father Wasim Sabieh and Father Thaier Saad Abdal, while a third, Father Qatin, has a bullet lodged in his head and is in uncertain condition. This is only the latest in a series of direct attacks on Iraqi churches that began in 2004.

Joseph Kassab, executive director of the Chaldean Federation of America, wrote to me that “since Iraq has no government, we are calling for the international community to intervene in protecting and saving the indigenous people of Iraq , the Chaldean Assyrian Syriac Community.” He emphasizes, “Things are deteriorating very fast in Iraq , our people are left with no choice but to flee because they are losing hope and there is no serious actions taken to protect them as of today.”

Archdeacon Emanuel Youkhana of the Church of the East, another persecuted Christian church with an ancient presence in Iraq , sent a report as well. Apart from the widely covered information that the terrorists demanded prison releases, he documents (with two links) another, directly religious motive that enraged al-Qaeda: the conversion of Muslim girls into another Christian denomination in another country.

The terrorists belong to Al-Qaieda organization in Iraq called: Islamic State of Iraq.They were demanding according to the Iraqi sources the release of their colleagues in Iraq and Egypt . A statement by this terrorist group and circulated on the internet in their websites is warning and demanding the release of the Muslim girls from Christian background who are, according to the statement, prisoners in Egyptian Coptic Church monasteries. The statement is giving 48 hours warning time to release those girls or they will explode the church. The statement, as other cases, is fill [sic] of threats against infidels everywhere.

Christians remain the largest non-Muslim minority in Iraq , but church leaders express a real fear that the light of the faith in Iraq — which is said to have been kindled personally by Thomas, one of Jesus’ Twelve Apostles — could soon be extinguished. Iraq ’s Christian population has been reduced by as much as half; adherents have been driven out by brutal terrorist attacks and government marginalization. Iraq ’s other non-Muslim religions — the much smaller groups of Mandeans (followers of John the Baptist), Yizidis (an ancient angel-centered religion), Bahai’s, and Jews — are also being forced out, and in some cases, their unique languages and cultures may not survive in exile.

Religious persecution in Iraq is so “egregious” that the country has now been included by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on a recommended short list of “Countries of Particular Concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act, alongside the likes of Iran and China . No group in Iraq, Muslim or non-Muslim, has been spared massive and appalling religiously motivated violence; however, as the independent federal commission found, the one-two punch of extremist ruthlessness and deep governmental discrimination now threatens the “very existence” of Iraq’s Christian churches (some of whom still pray in Aramaic, the language of Jesus of Nazareth) and Iraq’s communities of Mandeans and Yizidis, which are even older. As last night’s attack again shows, these smallest minorities are not simply caught in the middle. They are being fiercely targeted for their faith.

As I have written before, this raises an urgent question for the West: Without the experience of living alongside Christians and other non-Muslims at home, what would prepare the Muslim Middle East to peacefully coexist with the West?