L’arrivée le 8 mai d’Asia Bibi au Canada marque le dénouement d’une affaire qui durait depuis dix ans, et qui témoigne du retour de la question du blasphème dans nos sociétés contemporaines. En 2009, cette villageoise chrétienne se dispute avec des femmes musulmanes qui lui reprochent d’avoir souillé l’eau réservée aux musulmans. Asia Bibi est accusée d’avoir alors insulté le prophète Muhammad. Condamnée à mort, elle sera acquittée huit ans plus tard.
Au Pakistan, l’affaire a suscité des manifestations de masse pour exiger son exécution. Cette susceptibilité pakistanaise à l’égard du blasphème trouve ses origines au XIXe iècle avec l’introduction par les Britanniques d’un code pénal pour l’Inde coloniale.… Seguir leyendo »
This country has a poor record of protecting its religious minorities, but we outdo ourselves when it comes to Ahmadis. Members of the sect insist on calling themselves Muslims, and we mainstream Muslims insist on treating them like the worst kind of heretics.
The day I wrote this piece, a small headline in a newspaper informed me that an Ahmadi lawyer, his wife and two-year-old child had been shot dead by gunmen at home, for being Ahmadis. Killings like this have happened so many times that the story wasn’t even the main news. On May 28, 2010, some 90 Ahmadis were killed during attacks on two mosques in Lahore.… Seguir leyendo »
Last Monday, this city was briefly overrun with bands of sloganeering, stick-wielding youths. The demonstrators threw stones at police officers, burned car tires and smashed windows. One gang even plundered a 7Up truck, guzzling its goods before transfixed TV cameras. (I watched the footage — slow-mo jets of sparkly liquid, with strains of horror-movie music playing in the background — that night on the Internet.) There was a euphoric edge to the riots, apparent even when they took a grotesquely violent turn with the lynching of two men.
Who were these vandals? And what, if anything, did their actions demonstrate?
If you went by the original news bulletins, they were Christians reacting to a suicide bombing the day before of two churches in Youhanabad, a low-income area of Lahore that is home to some 100,000 Christians.… Seguir leyendo »
Last week’s massacre of 132 schoolchildren in Peshawar by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was horrific. It sparked a wave of sympathy—world leaders expressed their solidarity with the country—and also criticism—for years, Pakistan has given safe haven to terrorist groups.
TTP’s ghastly attack in Peshawar was hardly surprising. In the spring of 2010, Faisal Shahzad, a TTP-trained American, attempted to bomb Times Square in New York. Just weeks later, TTP operatives massacred 86 Ahmadi worshippers during Friday prayers at mosques in Lahore. (Ahmadis are a persecuted minority Muslim sect.) In 2013, TTP was linked to the killing of 127 Christians in Peshawar.… Seguir leyendo »
If ever there was a target for the Pakistan Taliban, I thought to myself, this would be it.
Besides the 750 graduating students and more than 2,000 guests gathered on the campus of Forman Christian College on Nov. 30 were the university’s American rector and two of Pakistan’s five provincial governors. Senior officials in Lahore had already warned the public to be vigilant. The police had information that the Taliban had dispatched suicide bombers to the city to take revenge for the recent killing of their leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, in a United States drone strike. Their targets would be senior government officials and foreigners, especially Americans.… Seguir leyendo »
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