Overturned
A Pakistani court has overturned the death sentence of a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy, a case that has polarised the nation.
Asia Bibi was convicted in 2010 after being accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad in a row with her neighbours.
She always maintained her innocence, but has spent most of the past eight years in solitary confinement.
The landmark ruling has already set off violent protests by hardliners who support strong blasphemy laws.
Demonstrations against the verdict are being held in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Multan. Clashes with police have been reported.
“Hardliners” is a good deal too euphemistic. They want a woman killed for supposedly saying something they don’t like about a self-declared prophet who’s been dead for 14 centuries. She says she didn’t say the Naughty Things, but if she had, so what? At most it might be a reason to find a neighbor unpleasant and hostile; we don’t get to kill neighbors we find unpleasant and hostile. These “hardliners” who “support strong blasphemy laws” are rioting because they want to see a woman killed for trivial words. If a religion doesn’t inspire you to be more loving toward other humans, what the hell is the point of it? Never wiping your bum with your right hand? Not good enough.
Even after she is freed, the legacy of her case will continue. Shortly after her conviction a prominent politician, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, was murdered for speaking out in her support and calling for the blasphemy laws to be reformed.
The killer – Mumtaz Qadri – was executed, but has become a cult hero with a large shrine dedicated to him on the outskirts of Islamabad.
His supporters also created a political party – campaigning to preserve the blasphemy laws – which gathered around two million votes in this year’s general election.
Two million votes for the party of murderous fanaticism – it’s tragic.
So the question is, will she be able to get out of Pakistan?
She has been offered asylum by several countries and is expected to leave the country.
Her daughter, Eisham Ashiq, had previously told the AFP news agency that if she were released: “I will hug her and will cry meeting her and will thank God that he has got her released.”
But the family said they feared for their safety and would likely have to leave Pakistan.
They will, of course. I just hope she and they can leave immediately, and will have support when they arrive. They’re not multi-lingual intellectuals, they’re farmers; moving to a foreign country is not going to be easy.
Pakistan and India sit side by side beneath the Eurasian landmass, as if in a controlled experiment on the effect of Islam on a population of a given ethnicity. Polytheist India is an economic powerhouse, while Islamic Pakistan is a basket case.
There is no pope in Islam, nor Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith or whatever it is called. Any man straight off the street can set up shop as an imam in his own mosque, starting with a modest shopfront and expanding into something more elaborate as his congregation grows. No theological training is necessary, though a ownership of a personal copy of the Koran is probably to be recommended. Hence the competing minarets rising above Islamic cities. They are advertising structures, and their arguable western counterparts are the billboards dotted along highways or the noisy commercials that compete for the long-suffering TV viewer’s attention.
The last thing Islamic educators want to do is to train young minds in critical thinking, lest that be turned against Islam itself, which has philosophical holes in it that one could drive a truck through. eg: “In Islamic teaching, the Buraq (the creature that the prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) used for his ride) is created of light. The same is for the angels. And they went with high speed, where the starting point is their speed of light. Although the travel might seem impossible to those who hate Islam, a flight across universe with a speed that way transcends light speed makes it acceptable to those who study the relativity theory.”
Believe that sort of bullshit, and you will believe anything.
Thus it becomes true. Mohammad cruised about the Arabian Peninsula astride the winged horse Baruq, and at the end of his time on Earth flew off the Heaven upon Baruq’s back: essential belief for Muislims if Islam is to have any social traction at all.
Fanatics thrive in this sort of climate. One can only wish Asia Bibi and her family a safe passage to somewhere a bit more rational.
https://www.quora.com/What-evidence-is-there-that-Muhammad-flew-to-heaven-with-a-winged-horse?fbclid=IwAR2QMhb-Lr28lneGJ5cmBhYnrqOkGD28W88v6jNK_YBET2ZBY4gkN2_A7II
I wish you’d left out the “on a population of a given ethnicity” part.
Why?
Well, one doesn’t want to racialize Islam from the outside. Even if Islam does just that from the inside. Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji have both described the shocking Arab racism they found in their communities.
The ‘given ethnicity’ of Serbs and Croats, divided by Orthodoxy and Catholicism, was enough to generate one of the worst genocides on record.
[My emphasis. – Omar]
In a controlled experiment, experimenters ensure that all factors save the one they are interested in are held constant. Races, ethnicities – call them what you will – exist, and it is foolish (particularly with the Nazi Holocaust in mind) to claim otherwise, or that they can not be powerful factors in social crises. If we are interested in the effect of a given religion (eg Islam) on other factors in society (eg science, economic activity) we rule out the possibility that differences in ‘race’ (however defined or euphemised) can explain any effect we see by holding ‘race’ (however defined or euphemised) constant across the survey area.
It is not rocket science. The same approach I dare say could be taken in a comparative study of Serbs and Croats, with ‘race’ (however defined or euphemised) held constant, and hopefully only religious differences left in there as variables.
And that is not ‘racism’.
Well now look at the mess you’re in. Did you mean religion, or race? Or “ethnicity”? You see the problem? They’re not all the same thing. In your first comment you apparently meant religion, so why not just say religion? In your third you defend saying “ethnicity” but talk about religion anyway. Precision is useful.
OB: “Ethnicity” is the Clayton’s term for race: the politically correct word that means exactly the same thing. So if ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’ call it what you will are the same for both populations in India and Pakistan, and all other variables are equal, and the only significant difference between the two is in the religious makeup of each, and one country is predominantly Islamic and the other a mix of many religions with the main one being polytheist Hinduism, and India is an economic powerhouse and Pakistan a basket case, then we have the same situation as if in a controlled experiment with religion as the only variable between the two. Close enough as.
Null hypothesis: Islam has no effect on scientific, industrial or economic progress (while ethnicity might have some effect nonetheless.) And I think we can scrap it.
Pakistan split away from the rest of what was previously British India in 1947, with Muslim clerics and cheerleaders doing their damnedest to aid the partition. Where the Christian British Raj previously provided its Pax Britannica, there was nothing to replace it after independence, and the choice became one of unceasing communal strife versus partition. And needless to add, a heap of unhappiness on both sides, families torn apart, etc, etc.
In Iraq in Saddam Hussein’s time, Sunii and Shia Muslims were kept apart in much the same way. They resumed their previous fighting and settling of old scores when Saddam was removed from power (IMHO a bloody good thing nonetheless, as the man was a monster.)
I have travelled in Iran. The country has fabulous oil wealth combined with massive youth unemployment and drug addiction: used syringes everywhere; watch out for them if you go there. The biggest infrastructure project underway at the time was the construction of the US$1 billion mosque-like mausoleum for the Ayatollah Khomeini just on the outskirts of Tehran: a testimonial to the lopsided priorities of the Islamic establishment if ever there was one.
Islam is hostile to representative democracy. Like mediaeval Catholicism, it favours a hierarchy with God at the top: spoken for of course by his earthly clerics. That system, which means that in order to change their government, the people have to endure a civil war, started its historic European collapse in England with the Cromwellian revolution of the 1640s, culminating in 1776 with the American Declaration of Independence, closely followed by the 1789 revolution in France.
But we see it also in modern failed states like Syria and Iraq, slouching towards nowhere in particular to be born again.
So, OB I meant race, and religion; but not confusing the two as in ‘Islam = a race’; the common confusion deliberately confected by the bullshit term ‘Islamophobia’.
You ask me: “Did you mean religion, or race? Or ‘ethnicity’? You see the problem? They’re not all the same thing.”
I respectfully submit that I never said, suggested, hinted or implied that they were.
Headlines in the Groan: “Asia Bibi’s husband pleads for family asylum in UK after blasphemy acquittal.”
“Pakistan government accused of signing death warrant by blocking Christian woman from leaving the country.”
Enraged Islamist lynch mobs are scouring length and breadth of Pakistan trying to find Bibi’s hiding place, turning Pakistan into the most mediaeval country on the face of the Earth. Certainly the most fascist.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/03/asia-bibi-husband-pakistan-blasphemy-acquittal-christian-plea-asylum