Catholic groups in India have brought blasphemy charges against Sanal Edamarauku, the country’s most prominent rationalist. They may get more than they bargained for, says Caspar Melville
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Pakistan’s Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf has reportedly ordered the state-owned Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to block YouTube after the video-sharing website failed to remove a controversial anti-Islam film, The Innocence of Muslims. “Blasphemous content will not be accepted at any cost,” Prime Minister Ashraf is reported to have said. Earlier today officials said over 700 links to the film on YouTube were blocked following orders issued by the Supreme Court. The film has triggered anti-US protests across the Muslim world over the past week.
A Pakistani Christian girl accused of desecrating a copy of the Qur’an was freed from a jail in Rawalpindi on Saturday. Rimisha Masih, who is 14 years old and has Down’s syndrome, was released after her village’s Muslim cleric was arrested, suspected of tampering with evidence in order to encourage anti-Christian sentiment. Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti appeared in court on Sunday, accused of adding pages torn from the Qur’an to a bag of rubbish and charred sacred texts that Rimsha had been seen carrying on 16 August. Rimisha’s lawyers say they will now push to have the case against her thrown out entirely.
An 11-year-old girl with Down’s Syndrome was last week arrested in Pakistan, after an angry mob demanded that the girl be punished for allegedly desecrating the Qur’an — the Islamic holy book. The young girl is a resident of a Christian neighbourhood on the outskirts of Islamabad, from where over 600 citizens have now fled after calls for her arrest were accompanied by threats to burn Christian homes in the area. This isn’t the first blasphemy case we’ve seen come out of Pakistan — earlier this year, charges were brought against Facebook for hosting “blasphemous content”. In September 2011, a young Christian school girl was expelled for misspelling a word on an exam question tied to a poem revering the prophet Muhammad.