Pakistani sentenced to die for blasphemy

by Kal El on June 18, 2008 · View Comments

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Tolerance on full display in muslim Pakistan. And this is our supposed ally in the war on terror.

A Pakistani judge sentenced a Muslim man to death Wednesday on charges he insulted Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, a court official said.

Falk Sher, a court administrator, said Judge Shoaib Ahmad Roomi also sentenced the man, Shafeeq Latif, to life in prison and fined him $75,000 on a separate charge of desecrating pages of Islam’s holy book, the Quran, in 2006.

Latif was accused of making derogatory remarks about Muhammad.

The trial was held in the eastern city of Sialkot after police arrested him in a nearby village.

Latif’s lawyer was not immediately available for comment, but Sher said the defendant had the right to appeal.

Under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, anyone who insults Muhammad can be punished by death. Scores of people, including Muslims and minority Christians, are facing trial under the laws, which human rights groups have demanded be abolished.

New York-based Human Rights Watch urged the government on Tuesday to abolish the death penalty in a country where nearly a quarter of all inmates are on death row.

I found this one in the Bakersfield Californian.

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  • http://www.snakeoilbaron.blogspot.com Saul Wall

    “New York-based Human Rights Watch urged the government on Tuesday to abolish the death penalty in a country where nearly a quarter of all inmates are on death row.”

    Nice of HRW to just reduce the issue to being one of the death penalty. The moral equivalence between serial rapists, child molesters and murderers on the one side and people exercising basic freedom of conscience and free expression on the other is revoltingly typical for the human rights industry. It would really be nice to have a real human rights advocacy group on the world scene.

  • Storm-Rider

    There is a real advocate for human rights on the world stage: It is the American Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution and Bill of Rights.

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

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