Pakistani Blasphemy Law Used Against Jehovah’s Witnesses

by Bangalore 5 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Bangalore

  Pakistani Blasphemy Law Used Against Jehovah’s Witnesses.
  
  https://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/2014/_05/article_3156846.html/
  
  
  Bangalore
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  Simon

  Commonly known as the blasphemy law, Pakistan’s Penal Code Section 295C’s death penalty went into effect in 1986 for the "use of derogatory remarks in respect of the [Islam’s] Holy Prophet". In 1990, the Federal Shari’ah Court ruled that the penalty should be a mandatory death sentence, with no right to a pardon .

  On May 7, a prominent human rights lawyer, Rashid Rehman , representing a teacher accused of blasphemy in Multan , about 550 kilometres southwest of Islamabad, was murdered.

  Rehman is the first lawyer to be killed for taking on a blasphemy case.

  Rehman was shot by gunmen posing as clients in his office for representing Junaid Hafeez, an English professor arrested in March 2013 after being accused by his students for insulting the Prophet Mohammed on Facebook .

  Hafeez had been in prison for nearly a year before Rehman agreed to represent him; his case became one of Rehman’s 228 blasphemy cases, including Sherry Rehman , who was Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States when charged with defaming Islam .

  Rehman joins a list of Pakistanis killed while opposing the country’s widely popular anti-blasphemy laws. Two elected officials, Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti, were killed while trying to pass an amendment in the Penal Code to end abuse of the laws.

  ... under Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq, in power from 1978-1988, the law was changed to protect only the Sunni version of Islam. It has since increasingly become a pretext to pressure Pakistan’s religious minorities.

  Wow, thank god that "islam isn't the problem" eh?!

  There is a certain irony that the laws were originally designed to prevent religious hatred by stopping any religion being disrespectful to others. Since it's been changed to only protect a certain version of Islam it's become a tool of oppression.
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  poopsiecakes

  Wow.
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  Caedes

  It just goes to show there is a very good religious reason to have an entirely secular government and legislature.
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  cookiemaster

  This makes me feel better about the American drones constantly bombing parts of Pakistan.
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  Ajax

  Not unlike the JWs claims to promote Freedom Of Religion - then deny the same "freedom" to their own members.