Paki Imam arrested in Blasphemy Case against Christian Girl
By Joseph DeCaro, Worthy News Correspondent
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN (Worthy News)– A Pakistani Imam was arrested Saturday in what was initially thought to be a case of blasphemy by a Christian girl that has enraged an entire Muslim community already predisposed to violently deal with any non-Muslim accused of insulting Islam.
Blindfolded and handcuffed, Hafiz Mohammad Khalid Chishti was led into an Islamabad courtroom Sunday on charges of fabricating evidence by adding pages from a Qu’ran to a bag of ashes carried by 14-year-old Rimsha Masih, according to investigating officer Munir Jaffery.
“I have not done anything wrong,” said Chishti. “This is all fabrication.”
But who actually did all the fabricating?
Jaffery said Hafiz Zubair — a Muezzin in the Mehra Jaffer mosque — testified before an executive magistrate that his Imam, Chishti, added two pages of the Qu’ran to the ashes brought to him by Masih’s original accuser and neighbor, Hammad Malek, in order to exacerbate the situation, thereby ridding themselves of Masih and the rest of their neighborhood’s unwanted Christians.
To that end, Masih — an ingenue reportedly afflicted with Down Syndrome — would seem the perfect patsy for the Imam’s inspired case of creative “do-it-yourself” blasphemy.
After Masih was arrested last month for burning papers containing verses from the Qu’ran, Christian homes were soon set afire by a Muslim mob in retaliation for her apparent desecration of Islam’s holy book. However, hundreds of worried homeowners had already fled the impoverished Islamabad neighborhood where the alleged blasphemy occurred.
Chishti had openly criticized Christians living in Islamabad and approved when many of them suddenly fled his neighborhood.
The Muezzin’s testimony surfaced more than two weeks after Masih was first arrested, raising questions as to why Zubair didn’t come forward sooner, but other questions had already been raised by Jihadwatch as it wondered how anyone would know what was in Masih’s bag of ashes unless they had put it there themselves.
While the Pakistani government remained silent about Masih’s case, a bipartisan group of six American senators wrote President Asif Ali Zardari, asking him to release her and to address the increasing religious intolerance in his Islamic state; instead, a senior Muslim cleric warned the United States and other nations to “mind their own business”.
Tahir Ashrafi, chairman of the All Pakistan Ulema Council, also urged his government to “get to the bottom of the conspiracy and expose the real culprits”.
“Our heads are bowed with shame for what Chishti did,” he said.
Ashrafi said Chishti was merely the front man for others behind the scene who wanted to stoke local antagonism against the Christian minority in the area in order to force them to flee.
“I have known for the last three months that some people in this area wanted the Christian community to leave so they could build a madrasa there,” he said.
Despite the use of blasphemy as a ploy for grabbing Christian land, few Muslims may be willing to see justice done in this case after two prominent Paki politicians — Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti — were both assassinated after calling for the reform of the nation’s notorious blasphemy laws.
Taseer’s convicted killer is still held in the same the high-security Adiyala facility in Rawalpindi as is Masih, whose bail proceedings have been repeatedly delayed by Judge Mohammad Azam Khan.
Masih’s lawyer, Raja Ikr, said the case against his client has collapsed.
“The prosecution has completely failed. There is nothing left in this case now,“ he told reporters after the adjournment
Previously, the lawyer representing complainant Malek said that if Masih was not convicted, Muslims would take the law into their own hands.
Rao Abdur Raheem told the Guardian that “If the court is not allowed to do its work, because the state is helping the accused, then the public has no other option except to take the law into their own hands.
“This girl is guilty. If the state overrides the court, then God will get a person to do the job. There is so much evidence against her, a reasonable court is not in a position to find her not guilty.”
But now that the evidence has been been tainted, the outcome of this case for all involved, both directly and indirectly, is in question.