Tag: Pakistan

Militant Islamists have spread conspiracy theories about vaccinations – which has contributed to a resurgence in polio.

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.

The depressing public reaction to the assassination of Pakistani politician Salman Taseer.

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.

With Pakistan’s government not responding effectively to catastrophic flooding, hard-line Islamic charities have provided relief with a grass-roots efficiency that is earning them new support among Pakistan’s masses.

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

Why do Pakistan and the Pakistani diaspora churn out such a high proportion of the world’s terrorists? Carved out of the Muslim-majority areas of British India in 1947, it was the world’s first modern nation based solely on Islam.

Five American Muslims were recently arrested in Pakistan.  Before they left the U.S., one created a video calling for the defense of Muslims in conflicts with the West and suggesting that “young Muslims have to do something.”

Pakistani soldiers have been seen beating civilian prisoners, including the parents of Taliban suspects, in a ten minute video posted on Facebook.

Religious violence results in the killings of Christians in Pakistan.  Attacks began in Gojra over a claim that a Koran had been defiled.

In eastern Pakistan, homes torched over allegations holy book was defiled

Much as the hammers that leveled the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the end of the Cold War, so might the protests rocking Iran signal the death of radical Islam and the challenges it poses to the West. Just as with the evangelicals and the Republican Party, the integration of politics and religious dogma cannot hold.

The regional dimension to the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan

The regional dimension to the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan

At least 11 people were killed last night and 70 injured when suspected Islamic militants stormed a five-star hotel frequented by aid workers in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.