Muslim cleric Muhammad Salim isn't worried that a court or Pakistan's president might spare a Christian woman from this village who has been sentenced to death on blasphemy charges.
After all, if Asia Bibi, a mother of two, escapes the hangman's noose, he's confident someone else will kill her.
"Any Muslim, if given the chance, would kill such a person," Salim said calmly, seated cross-legged on a straw mat at a mosque here. "You would be rewarded in heaven for it."
A cleric in Peshawar has offered 500,000 rupees, or $6,000, to anyone who kills Asia Bibi, if her execution doesn't take place. Other hard-line clerics have warned they would mobilize nationwide protests against the government if President Asif Ali Zardari pardoned her.
The nation's Shiite Muslim minority has been victimized by extremist Sunni Muslim groups for years. Members of the smaller Ahmadi sect, viewed by most Pakistanis as traitors to Islam because they revere another prophet in addition to Muhammad, have been frequent victims of suicide bombings, kidnappings and other attacks.
Last year, in the central Punjab city of Gojra, a mob of 1,000 Muslims set fire to more than 40 Christian homes, killing seven people.
Various subsections of the law carry different penalties, but under the section Asia Bibi was prosecuted, the only sentence is death.
The law dates to the 1980s and the rule of Gen. Zia ul-Haq, who instituted a policy of Islamization to placate hard-line religious parties in exchange for their political support.
Human rights advocates say the law is frequently used by Pakistanis embroiled in property disputes or as a tool to bully Christians, Ahmadis or other minorities. Usually, evidence in blasphemy cases is scant, apart from the accounts given by the accusers.
Asia Bibi's husband has received death threats and has had to go into hiding with the couple's two teenage daughters.
Keeping the law on the books in effect sanctions the marginalization of minorities
Earlier: napaki.tumblr.com
Twitter handle: @napaki
Read the original article by clicking on the respective post titles
