Man is burned to death for blasphemy

[Zostrianos]

By an Islamic mob in Pakistan:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18713545

A Pakistani mob has taken a man accused of blasphemy from a police station and burnt him to death, police say.
The man was being held for allegedly burning a copy of the Koran in public. The incident took place on the outskirts of Bahawalpur, in Punjab province.
Witnesses said hundreds of people looked on as he screamed for help.
Pakistan's controversial blasphemy law imposes the death penalty for insulting Islam, but it is rarely carried out.
The area where the lynching took place is home to hundreds of madrassas - religious schools - run by radical Islamist or sectarian groups.
Police said they detained the man after locals complained that he had desecrated the Koran.
But before the allegation could be investigated, thousands of angry people surrounded the police station, police said.
"They were demanding that we kill him in front of them, or they'll take him away and kill him themselves," police inspector Ghulam Mohiuddin told the BBC.
'Hysterical' After officers unsuccessfully tried to calm the crowd, it attacked the station, as police tried to disperse it with tear gas. Several policemen were wounded in the violence.
The mob put up roadblocks to prevent police reinforcements from reaching the area, officers said.
"We were totally outnumbered. There were too many of them and they were hysterical. Eventually, they succeeded in taking him away," said one.
The man was reportedly beaten and dragged to the spot where he is said to have desecrated the Koran.
The mob then poured petrol on him and set him on fire, according to witnesses.
Police say they are trying to identify the victim, who was said to be mentally unstable.
"The man had no idea what was going on," said an official.
"While he was in our custody, he kept laughing and chanting."
A case has been registered against unknown attackers. No arrests have been made yet.

[Klaatu]

"Pakistan's controversial blasphemy law imposes the death penalty for insulting Islam, but it is rarely carried out."

Does Pakistan impose the death penalty for insulting other religions?

[Zostrianos]

I don't think so. Since it's officially an Islamic republic, only Islam is untouchable

[l'Enfermé]

Does Pakistan impose the death penalty for insulting other religions?
In Islam there's a chain of prophets that were sent by God/Allah to preach monotheism and root out idolatry and polytheism, and the chain included Noah, Abraham, Solomon, David, etc, and ended with Jesus and Muhammad, so I guess in their opinion, insulting Jesus/Abraham/David/etc is also insulting to God and Muslims, because those men were Muslim prophets in their opinion. I guess the law might extend to insulting Jesus, but only the Muslim Jesus, not the son-of-god Christian version which they/we consider blasphemy and an invention of the devil(I come from a Muslim family so I know my fair share of these fairy tales).

Edit: Anyway that's pretty horrible. I read somewhere else that the guy was actually beaten to death first though, and then his corpse was burned, and that does make more sense since they'd have trouble setting a living moving man on fire unless they broke his legs first.

[Book O'Dead]

It's just horrible what happens when frenzied mobs attack someone. I hate to read shit like that.

[Baseball]

Pakistan is NOT an Islamic republic; it is, at least officially, a secular state. Its laws and government were inherited from the UK. It is in many parts of the country thoroughly modern.

However, millitant Islam is on the rise. It is against the law to insult Mohammed and recently the law was changed to permit the death penalty in such situations. It is not illegal to insult Jesus Christ, however. Proselthytising was also recently forbidden. The country is definitely on the track to the 1300s- with the exception of course of their very modern nuclear weapons.

[Zostrianos]

Pakistan is NOT an Islamic republic; it is, at least officially, a secular state. Its laws and government were inherited from the UK. It is in many parts of the country thoroughly modern.


It used to be like that, but in the 1970's there was a program to islamicize the government which turned the country into a borderline Islamic republic, and brought a handful of Sharia laws that still run the country today:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zia-ul-Haq's_Islamization

Under the Zina Ordinance the provisions relating to adultery were replaced as that the women and the man guilty will be flogged, each of them, with a hundred stripes, if unmarried. And if they are married they shall be stoned to death. It was argued that the section 497 of the Pakistan Penal Code dealing with the offence of adultery provided certain safeguards to the offender in as much as if the adultery is with the consent or connivance of the husband, no offence of adultery was deemed to have been committed in the eye of law. The wife, under the prevailing law, was also not to be punished as abettor. Islamic law knows no such exception.
Women bore much of the burden of Zia's Islamization and its inconsistencies. The Zina Ordinance prompted bitter international criticism about the perceived injustices and miseries brought about by the Zina Ordinance. Women's rights groups helped in the production of a film titled "Who will cast the first stone?" to highlight the oppression and sufferings of women under the Hudood Ordinances. In September 1981, the first conviction and sentence under the Zina Ordinance, of stoning to death for Fehmida and Allah Bakhsh were set aside under national and international pressure.
In many cases,Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq,put more than 15,000 rape victims in jail because they could not comply with the Islamic condition requiring them to have numerous male witnesses of their victimization. They were charged with fornication and their rapists were let go free,

[l'Enfermé]

The 1300s look like a progressive heaven in terms of religious tolerance compared to modern Pakistan. But yeah Pakistan was islamized rather recently, by the American-backed dictator Haq(he probably didn't give a shit about Islam anyways, he just picked all that hardcore Islamism stuff because his left-wing opposition was secular). Incidentally, Haq also introduced massive privatization and deregulation.