According to a story on the Persecution.org website, 55-year-old Dr Robin Sardar was charged with violating Pakistan’s blasphemy laws in Hafizabad district on 5 May.
Sardar is alleged to have made “derogatory comments” about Mohammed’s beard and about the Muslims’ “holy book” the Koran. He was reported to police, and, says the story, “a mob of over 200 Muslims wearing green turbans, a symbol of their Islamic orthodoxy, attacked the doctor’s house and medical clinic”.
The mob was holding sticks, guns and kerosene oil, and proceeded to force their way into the house, smashing windows and furniture throughout the house and clinic. The mob then turned on Sardar and his family.
Pervaiz Ghori, one of Sardar’s relatives, said the mob would have killed the doctor if the police had not intervened in time.
Since then, the religious extremists have organized daily demonstrations on the city’s roads demanding that Sardar be hanged publicly. Shamaoun said that all the Christians in the area, especially Dr Sardar’s family members, are living in fear because the local Muslim clerics have been regularly using the mosque amplifier to call on people to kill the relatives of the Christian doctor.
Dr Sardar was being held in the central jail for Gujranwala district at the time this report was written.
The National Commission for Justice and Peace, a human rights body of the Catholic Church in Pakistan, has taken up Dr Sardar’s case, and is urging the authorities to withdraw the allegation and provide protection to religious minorities.
They don’t like perceived insults against their religion in Pakistan. Well, as we’ve seen, most members of this moaning, groaning, whingeing, griping religious cult don’t seem to like anything much, except sticking their backsides in the air and head-butting their magic carpets five times a day and bleating if someone so much as doodles on a piece of paper something that looks like a beardy old bod with a turban.
In Pakistan, medieval blasphemy laws can put someone in jail for life, and breaking the one that deals with a perceived desecration of the prophet carries a death sentence.
“According to data collected by the National Commission for Justice and Peace,” says the story, “892 individuals have been charged for blasphemy since the implementation of this disputed law in 1986. In first four months of 2008, 15 people were accused of blasphemy, and Dr Sardar is the only Christian in this group.”
The story goes on to appeal to any readers to contact the Pakistani embassy in their countries and ask them to protect the rights of Christians and all religious minorities. Here are the contact details they give for Pakistani embassies: UK: phone 0870 005-6967, email hoc@phclondon.org; USA: phone (202) 243-6500, email info@embassyofpakistanusa.org; Canada: phone (613) 238-7881, email parepottawa@rogers.com.
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