Some people spot a minor girl ‘moving suspiciously’ in a rural area near Islamabad while carrying a plastic shopper. They later found some burnt pages of Noorani Qaida (a book to learn the basics of the Quranic script) in the shopper. All this was sufficient for the following events to unroll: girl is accused of blasphemy, she is badly beaten, her family flees the area for safety, the police registers a case and the girl is arrested, a large crowd gathers outside the police station, they want to set the girl on fire, crowd cordones off the police station and blocks the nearby highway, fearing for the girl’s life (and their own lives as well) the police produces the girl in a court who sends her off to Adiyala jail on judicial remand, police and court actions infuriate the protesters who scuffle with police and damage the nearby public and private property.
During the initial investigation, the Christian girl aged 11 was unable to answer the questions and the poor girl suffered from Down syndrome. It points to the extent of intolerance in our society that such a young child with a learning disability can be subjected to such atrocious behaviour on a meaningless pretext.
Can we not say that the blasphemy related amendment that Zia introduced in Pakistan’s constitution has made the whole nation suffer from a Down-like syndrome? Can we justify that we are sane people and not the monsters the outside world portrays us to be? How can we reject such stereotyping as prejudiced when our country – which was created itself to safeguard the rights of a minority – refuses to extends such injustice to its own minorities.
MASOOD KHAN
Saudi Arabia