SHAFAQNA PAKISTAN (Shia News Agency)
Farkhunda, 27, was killed by a mob last week in front of the mosque where she worked as a religious teacher, falsely accused of burning pages from the Qu’ran. A crowd of men beat her, pulled her off a roof when she tried to escape, pelted her with wooden planks and ran her over with a car, before burning her dead body. The attack on Farkhunda outside Kabul’s Shah-Do Shamshira mosque was triggered by a mullah who shouted that she had burned pages of Islam’s holy book, igniting uproar among men at the scene. It seems that situation in Afghanistan is not altogether different. In Pakistan, we are all too aware of how mobs can be incited to frenzy by accusations of blasphemy. The savage lynching of Shama and Shahzad and the attack on Ahmadis’ homes last year, and the ransacking of Joseph Colony in 2013, are only among the more recent examples. Worldly considerations lie at the heart of many blasphemy accusations, and the arrow of the blasphemy law is a handy weapon to achieve the objective. Perhaps even more unfortunate are those incidents in which the trigger is an individual’s mental illness and his concomitant lack of control over his actions. In 2012, a mentally unstable man accused of desecrating religious text was lynched by a crowd in Bahawalpur.
No too late two men were lynched and burned after Church attacks in Youhanabad.
It seems that religious extremism is rapidly taking over this region and these are dangerous sign for any society. The need of the hour is that governments should strictly implement such laws in which innocent are lynched or burned.
pakistan.shafaqna.com
