Falsely Accused and Suffering in Silence
July 29, 2019 - FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL
Asia Bibi may be the world's most recognizable blasphemy law victim, but just because she's free doesn't mean the problem is solved.
Far from it, Shaan Taseer warned at this month's ministerial on international religious freedom.
"... [T]here are 200 Asia Bibis in jail accused of blasphemy law" just in Pakistan, he said.
And he's willing to devote his life -- just as his father did -- to seeing it end.
For Shaan, the calling is personal.
His dad, the late governor of Punjab, Pakistan, gave his life to end the injustice.
"Not on my watch," he vowed.
When Asia, a Christian, was accused of smearing Mohammad's name, Salmaan Taseer stood by her -- knowing that the claims, which she denied, were probably false.
Bibi was sentenced to death anyway, a charge the court recently overturned.
And while Asia escaped death, Salmaan, as a public ally, did not.
"He threw his weight behind Asia Bibi," Shaan remembers.
"He met with her in prison... He called for a presidential pardon given the weaknesses in the case.
He called for reform of the blasphemy law."
And he paid for it with his life.
In 2011, Shaan's father was shot 27 times by his bodyguard after a Muslim fatwa demanded his assassination.
Years later, Shaan is carrying on his dad's legacy.
"If we claim to be working towards a world free of religious persecution, then this is the frontline of that work," he told world leaders at the State Department.
"These are the foot soldiers fighting for the world that we believe in, for a new and progressive society free of religious persecution."
Two of those foot soldiers, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) may not agree on a lot of policy, but they agree on this: blasphemy, heresy, and apostasy laws have no place in civil society.
Together, in House Resolution 512, they condemn the practice and call for officials to stop imposing "religious dogma on individuals or minorities through the power of government or violence sanctioned by the government."
"[A]s of May 2018, USCIRF [The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom] was aware of approximately 40 individuals on death row for blasphemy in Pakistan or serving life sentences," the text, which was introduced last week in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, points out.
(To understand just how dangerous these policies are, take time to read through FRC's new publication: Apostasy, Blasphemy, and Anti-Conversion Laws.)
There are persecuted men and women in prison all over the world, charged with crimes they didn't commit.
Young people, like 16-year-old Nabeel Masih, who, the Christian Post explains, "was jailed in 2016 after being accused of posting a blasphemous picture on Facebook.
However, Masih has maintained that he did not author the post in question."
"The troops of history will march on," Shaan said, "and I have no doubt that the blasphemy laws of Pakistan, like the Jim Crow laws, the Apartheid laws of South Africa, like the Nuremberg laws of Nazi Germany, will take their rightful place in the dustbin of human history. When that day comes -- and I hope it will be in my lifetime -- we may want to ask us what we did to help those who suffered under this law."
Tony Perkins' Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
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