Jailed Christian mother acquitted after eight years. But threats of violent nationwide protests persist.
[This story is breaking and will be updated]
Today the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted Asia Bibi of committing blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad, a crime punishable with death, amid threats of countywide paralyzing protests and “horrible” consequences to justices and army generals if the Christian mother of five was released.
Bibi’s husband Ashiq Masih and their two daughters, currently in London, anxiously await her safe release and reunion with her after eight years of wrongful detention.
However, Agence France-Presse has reported that the Red Mosque [Lal Masjid]—a significant mosque in the capital, Islamabad, which played a pivotal role in the 1980s and ’90s in recruiting and trainingmujaheedin for the Soviet-Afghan war—had filed a petition in the Islamabad High Court to put Bibi’s name “on the no-fly list” so that she could not leave the country. The Red Mosque “will become a center for the anti-government movement” if she is released.
Bibi was the first Christian woman sentenced to death under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, and only the second (after Ayub Masih, released in 2002) whose blasphemy case has gone up to the Supreme Court and been released.
Earlier this month, on October 8, a three-member bench—chief justice Mian Saqib Nisar and justices Asif Saeed Khosa and Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel—heard arguments from both sides, but reserved their verdict until today.
The hardline Islamist party, Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP), held countrywide protests on October 14 and warned that the justices would meet a “horrible” end if Bibi was released. The TLP is “a staunch supporter of the blasphemy law and openly justify violence ...
from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2yK5szd
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