AHORE, Pakistan (AP) — Hundreds of people in eastern Pakistan rampaged through a Christian neighborhood Saturday, torching dozens of homes after hearing reports that a Christian man had committed blasphemy against Islam's prophet.

Blasphemy is a serious crime in Pakistan that can carry the death penalty but sometimes outraged residents exact their own retribution for perceived insults of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Pakistan is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim and people of other faiths, including the nation's small Christian community, are often viewed with suspicion.

The incident started Friday when a young Muslim man accused a Christian man of committing blasphemy by making offensive comments about the prophet, according to Multan Khan, a senior police officer in Lahore.

A large crowd from a nearby mosque went to the Christian man's home on Friday night, said Khan. Police registered a blasphemy case against the man after the crowd gathered and demanded action, the officer said.

Fearing for their safety, hundreds of Christian families fled the area overnight.

Khan said the mob returned on Saturday and began ransacking Christian homes and setting them ablaze. He said no one in the Christian community was hurt, but several policemen were injured when they were hit with stones as they tried to keep the crowd from storming the area.

But Akram Gill, a local bishop in the Lahore Christian community said the incident had more to do with personal enmity between two men — one Christian and one Muslim — than blasphemy. He said the men got into a brawl after drinking late one night, and in the morning the Muslim man made up the blasphemy story as payback.

He said the Christian community handed over to police the accused man, identified by police and Gill as Sawan Masih, when police came to the neighborhood to investigate. Then the Christians all locked up their houses and went to relatives in other areas. He said the mob was armed with hammers and steel rods and broke into houses, ransacked two churches and burned Bibles and crosses.

"Poor people were living here. They have lost all of their belongings," he said. "Where can they go now?"

The scene was chaotic. An Associated Press reporter said roughly 150 homes were torched. One man was seen carrying a dog and some puppies from a burning house. Refrigerators, washing and sewing machines, cooking pots, beds and other household goods were ripped from homes, smashed and burned in the streets.

One Christian couple from the neighborhood said they went to their Muslim neighbors' house on Friday night after people came looking for the Christian man accused of blasphemy. Ishaq Masih said the Muslim neighbors sheltered the couple for the night and then gave them money to leave the area in the morning.

After the mob dissipated, residents began to slowly return to their burned-out homes.

"They have burnt each and every thing in my whole house. Nothing is left here. I don't know why this happened," said Samina Riaz. "Now we don't have even enough to eat."

Such accusations of blasphemy in Pakistan can prompt huge crowds to take the law into their own hands. Once an accusation is made it's extremely difficult to get it reversed, partly because law enforcement officials do not want to be seen as being soft on blasphemers.

Two prominent politicians were assassinated in 2011 for urging reform of the law. The killer of one of the politicians was hailed as a hero, and lawyers at his legal appearances showered him with rose petals.

According to Human Rights Watch, there are at least 16 people on death row for blasphemy and another 20 are serving life sentences.

Last year there was a rare reversal of a blasphemy case. A teenage Christian girl with suspected mental disabilities was accused of burning pages of the Quran. But she was later released after a huge domestic and international outcry about her treatment. A local cleric where she lived was arrested and accused of planting the pages in her bag to incriminate her, a rare example of the accuser facing legal consequences. However, he was later freed on bail.

While Muslims are frequently accused of blasphemy, members of Pakistan's small Christian community are especially vulnerable to the accusations, said the head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Zora Yusuf. Only in Christian cases will violent mobs punish the entire community for the perceived crime of one Christian.

She said often these blasphemy cases are personal grudges or disputes masquerading as religious fervor.

"Most of the time there are other motives involved," she said, such as scaring off Christian residents to grab their property.

The chief minister of Punjab province, Shahbaz Sharif, quickly condemned the incident and said investigators will use video footage of the rampage to identify the guilty and make arrests. He also said he was removing a number of high-ranking police officers.

But the Punjab government has frequently been criticized by human rights groups for essentially tolerating the type of religious extremism that often leads to this type of violence and the Sunni Muslim extremists who often whip up anti-minority sentiment.

"The Punjab provincial government has spent almost its entire 5-year term in office being in denial about threats to minorities," said Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan director of Human Rights watch in a statement.

Also on Saturday, four people were killed and 25 were wounded when a bomb exploded inside a mosque of the Sunni Barelvi sect in the northwestern city of Peshawar. The bomb was planted in a bookshelf inside the mosque and was detonated by remote control when noon prayers started, said senior police officer Imtiaz Khan.

Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has been the site of several terrorist attacks in recent months. The city is surrounded by lawless tribal regions where al-Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban have hideouts.

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what a S*ithole!

and allah granted them that shiithole...

End blasphemy laws threatening minorities: U.N. faith expert

GENEVA (Reuters) - Countries should repeal all laws punishing blasphemy and people who leave a faith, the United Nations' top expert on freedom of religion said on Wednesday, thrusting himself into a debate between many in the Muslim world and the West.

Legislation outlawing apostasy - the act of changing religious affiliation - and insults against religious figures could be used to violate the rights of minorities, Heiner Bielefeld said in a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The comments from the United Nations' special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief came amid heightened focus on faith-based laws in countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where blasphemy carries the death penalty.

"States should repeal any criminal law provisions that penalize apostasy, blasphemy and proselytism, as they may prevent persons belonging to religious or belief minorities from fully enjoying their freedom of religion or belief," he said in the report.

Rights campaigners say the blasphemy law in Pakistan is widely used against religious minorities, including Christians, Ahmadis and more recently Shiah Muslims, usually on flimsy pretexts.

The posting of an amateurish U.S.-made video mocking the Prophet Mohammad, and the publication of caricatures of him in France last year led to violent protests and renewed calls from the Muslim world for a global law against blasphemy.

Speaking on the fringes of the rights council on Wednesday, Bielefeld said criminalizing concepts like blasphemy was dangerous for free speech because there could be no common definition of what it was.
Although a handful of Western countries have blasphemy laws, originally introduced to bar attacks on Christianity, they have largely fallen into disuse. Some Muslim groups in Europe call for their reactivation.

In once strongly Catholic Ireland, where blasphemy is banned under the 1937 constitution, new legislation introduced in 2010 - partly in response to appeals from the small Muslim community - set a hefty fine for offending religious belief.

But Irish officials say that law, now being reconsidered by a special commission, seems likely to be withdrawn as an obstruction to free speech.

Bielefeld does not speak for the U.N. but was taken on as an independent official to report regularly on how freedom of religion was respected across the world.

Watch out for Sharia law!!!


Ladies this last one that worries me affects mainly you. It alarms me because I have a daughter and three nieces right now in their late 20's. Any guy who has female relatives/friends should be a bit worried too.
I am not a fear monger, I just want us to all pay attention to what is going on even if it is "scary".
A woman in NJ filed a case against her separated husband from Morocco. Seems he went to her place, forced her to have sex. That is rape here,sex forced upon you. This woman is trying to get rid of the scumbag and had filed for divorce.
The judge dismissed the case. The man's defense was Sharia law (as in Iran or other muslim countries) permitted him to do this. The judge AGREED. Fortunately a second judge overruled the first.
70% of Oklahoma votes passed a law that outlawed the consideration of sharia law or other nations beliefs when considering court cases over the American law. A muslim complained it demonized his faith and found a judge who is going to strike down the law. I do not know if OK law passed after the NJ case or not.
I think those voters in NJ and OK need to impeach and remove a couple of judges. Do you ladies really want to go into a court where they might invoke sharia law? It treats women like dogs.
Think it cannot happen here? So did people in UK and France. There are population pockets there where sharia law is the de facto law. The governments stamp it out when they find it, but admitted it is a big problem. It keeps popping up.
I don't know if anyone else keeps up with, ummm, weird news like I do. Just thought I'd say the world is different and not necessarily better. We better be diligent about guarding our rights.
When an American citizen travels to another country we leave our rights and our laws at the border and are bound by what little rights and laws other countries have. I have lived out of the USA for years and even the democratic countries do not have the rights and laws we do. If you go to court there they do side with their citizen as you are an interloper.
When they come here, they need to realize they have great freedom. They also need to understand the American law is the law of the land and is all that will be used. I know our law is cumbersome at best even with a lawyer, but I guarantee you it is above the rest by far. Yeah, USA is messed up, but we can all work together to make it better because it IS the best country on Earth. I think only the Canadians come close to our freedoms.
A prime example of danger to us is the Ms Knox case in Italy. No physical evidence, only her confession from what I've heard. The confession was nearly beat out of her over several hours with no attorney. No court here would allow that, did the Italians allow it just cuz she is American? No idea folks, I cannot tell if she did it or not myself, need to hear the evidence.
I'm just saying watch yourself when you travel, you do not want to get in trouble in their courts. And don't use hand gestures, an a-ok or thumbs up will get your face punched in Italy. If you travel maybe you should take a familiarization course first?
And guys, do you really want Hooter Girls to wear berkas? Do you really want to go to the beach and see berkas and not string bikinis? I don’t think so. If you do not know what a berka is it is a Sharia law garment for a woman that covers her from head to toe, you can see their eyes only.

any judge in any court in this country who supercedes US law with Sharia or any religious tenet should be immediately impeached and disbarred. As such there could also be a case for treason here depending upon the circumstances, and we all know the penalty for that. Marital rape became illegal in this country a long time ago. I hope this scumbag gets what he deserves.

because of the headaches they cause, Muslim practitioners should not be permitted to stay in the US unless they sign a specific statement in their language and in English that states the muslim individual understands that Sharia law is not legal in the USA and that he/she will be bound by US law as long as he/she is in US jurisdiction.

it is the immigrant or visitor's responsibility to know what those laws are here, and if they can't live without Sharia law they need to leave.

There are already muslim judges here that uphold shariah in areas that are dominant muslim.
Too late.

Progressives still claim sharia will never be law here.

PS
Nation of Islam is a dangerous muslim cult.

nothing dangerous about NOI, dont screw with them and they dont screw with you,,,

T^hat is, until they become a majority.
Then, they push their own agenda.
Kill whitey, Jews and all non-muslims.

you need to listen a bit more close to that Fiddler/Calypso-Singer running that Show!

thats not really true... since they seem to hate everyone thats not NOI, that puts me in their crosshairs, even though i personally never screwed with them.

what evidence is their to support that they would ever be a majority or that they would decide to
kill all non muslims?

Ive listened to him, he has said if you dont screw with them they wont screw with you,,,,lol

I think you are listening too much to mainstream gossip,, and soundbytes and not researching

they have no reason to hate you,, they dont know you

Did you-all miss this part?

"But Akram Gill, a local bishop in the Lahore Christian community said the incident had more to do with personal enmity between two men — one Christian and one Muslim — than blasphemy. He said the men got into a brawl after drinking late one night, and in the morning the Muslim man made up the blasphemy story as payback."



This entire article is just propaganda to inflame religious prejudice and racism --and what I would call anti-semitic propaganda against muslims. (who are the real Semitic people)

"She said often these blasphemy cases are personal grudges or disputes masquerading as religious fervor. "

Humans are just humans. They like to pretend they believe in their religions, but they don't.

Is that Harry Belafonte?

Harry isn't bad, but I think people should pay more attention to Rasta reggae stuff like Bob Marley...They should have some ghanja and mellow out a little...There is far to much hate and division in the world.