Asylum
Asia Bibi has escaped Pakistan and arrived in Canada.
Pakistani government officials did not reveal her destination, or say when she left.
But her lawyer Saif ul Malook told the BBC she had already arrived in Canada, where two of her daughters are understood to have been granted asylum.
Asia Noreen – commonly known as Asia Bibi – was kept at a secret location while arrangements were made for her to leave the country.
The Supreme Court’s quashing of her sentence last October led to violent protests by religious hardliners who support strong blasphemy laws, while more liberal sections of society urged her release.
The thing is, though, you can “support strong blasphemy laws” and still not insist on applying them to people who didn’t commit any blasphemy. You shouldn’t, and no country should have laws against it, any more than it should have laws against saying men are men, but even if you do it still makes no sense to apply it to people who didn’t do anything.
Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan are three countries dominated by Islam and its clerics. Pakistan and Afghanistan are economic basket cases: as would Iran be if it had no oil.
Most importantly, education is controlled by the Islamic clerics, and so independent thought is positively discouraged, lest it be turned on the religion.
Moreover, Mohammad and his successors have done all the thinking that is needed, and on behalf of the entire population of the Islamic world. It is all there in the Koran and the Hadiths. That is all any Muslim needs to know.
And it shows.
Thank goodness.