Islamic teacher kills 7-year-old for not learning Koran

A blind seven-year-old pupil at a madrassa (Islamic school) in eastern Pakistan has been killed by his teacher for not learning the Koran.

"Muhammad Atif was hung upside down from a ceiling fan and severely beaten by his teacher, Qari Ziauddin, at the seminary or madrassa in Vihari, near Lahore on Thursday," says Australia's Herald-Sun.

Police say the teacher's been arrested on charges of torturing and murdering the boy, and that a postmortem has confirmed physical torture as the cause of death.

A local police official, Akram Nazi (a surname the teacher might be happy with), tells reporters, "Qari Ziauddin, who teaches Koran to boys in Qari Latif Islamic school, hanged Atif upside down with a ceiling fan in the school after beating him with sticks, which caused his death."

Ziauddin also failed to take the boy to hospital after he fell ill and his condition deteriorated, said the official.

It's only one of hundreds of incidents of abuse (not all as tragic, thankfully), as this BBC story tells us. And violence in madrassas has happened closer to home, according to this story in the Manchester Evening News. And, according to The Times in 2006, quoted here by the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, up to 100,000 British kids of Muslim parents are at risk in the UK.