Tag: Blasphemy

An Indian Muslim leader has demanded Salman Rushdie be banned from the country’s biggest literary festival, warning that an invitation to the novelist who endured a fatwa will add “salt to injury”.

Vigilantes kill a man for blasphemy in Pakistan, even after he was acquitted by a local court.

Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian and Pakistan’s minority affairs minister, is the second top official in the past two months to be killed after opposing harsh blasphemy laws.

In Pakistan’s huge port city of Karachi, religious scholars united to forbid mourning. They urged pious Muslims not to offer funeral prayers for the outspoken governor of the Punhjab, Salmaan Taseer, who had most recently made headlines by championing the rights of Aasia Bibi, a Christian convert facing execution because of the country’s blasphemy laws.

The 26-year-old smiling assassin who killed Pakistani politician Salman Taseer is an elite commando trained by the government, motivated by religious zeal and praised by hardline clerics. Officials said he volunteered for duty that day, made sure his weapon was fully armed and then waited for his boss to walk towards his waiting car, before reportedly shouting “Allahu Akbar”, opening fire and surrendering.

Extremism associated with Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law appeared to claim another victim Tuesday, when the governor of the country’s wealthiest and most politically powerful province was gunned down in Islamabad by a 26-year-old member of his own security detail. Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab, was shot at close range by a newly assigned guard who told authorities and the media he was angry about Taseer’s criticism of Pakistan’s law against blasphemy, considered the most draconian of any Muslim-majority country.

Strikes paralyzed several cities in Pakistan, as demonstrators protested against a proposal to moderate the blasphemy law, which currently carries a mandatory death sentence for anyone who insults Islam, and which has been criticized for being used to persecute religious minorities.

A Pakistani court has sentenced to death a Christian mother of five for blasphemy.

Lahore High Court has ordered 17 websites blocked for carrying blasphemous content.

Opponents of a bid by Muslim states to “protect religion” claim a small success

An atheist group in the Irish Republic has defied a new blasphemy law by publishing a series of anti-religious quotations on its website. Atheist Ireland says it will fight any action taken against it in court. The quotations include the words of writers such as Mark Twain and Salman Rushdie, but also Jesus Christ, the Prophet Muhammad and Pope Benedict XVI.

A number of factors contribute to growing religious intolerance: a harsh blasphemy law and the increasing presence of radical Islamist organizations

Ireland passes a law making blasphemy a crime.  Under this law, it will be a crime to criticize religion… any religion.

The Irish Government plans to pass a new blasphemy law. Advocacy groups Atheist Ireland and Index on Censorship are opposing the Bill.

For years, the Western world has listened aghast to stories out of Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations of citizens being imprisoned or executed for questioning or offending Islam. But now an equally troubling trend is developing in the West.

Islam in Britain has been taken over by the followers of a distorted faith. We need a reformation to rescue it