Speaking this week to an Indian audience in Mumbai, President Obama said, "More than a billion people practise Islam and an overwhelming majority view their obligations to a religion that reaffirms peace, fairness, tolerance. I think all of us recognise that this great religion in the hands of a few extremists has been distorted by violence."
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| Asa Bibi, Christian, condemned to die by adherents of "peace, fairness, tolerance" for not being verbally respectful of Muhammad |
Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old mother-of-five, denies blasphemy and told investigators that she was being persecuted for her faith in a country where Christians face routine harassment and discrimination. ...The blasphemy law in Pakistan is used routinely and regularly to persecute non-Muslims to make sure they know their place there as third-class citizens. This is not "extremism." It is a mainstream, government-sanctioned practice in one of the most populous Muslim countries in the world. And almost no Pakistani Muslims speak out against it.
The court heard she had been working as a farmhand in fields with other women, when she was asked to fetch drinking water.
Some of the other women – all Muslims – refused to drink the water as it had been brought by a Christian and was therefore "unclean", according to Mrs Bibi's evidence, sparking a row.
The incident was forgotten until a few days later when Mrs Bibi said she was set upon by a mob.
The police were called and took her to a police station for her own safety.
Shahzad Kamran, of the Sharing Life Ministry Pakistan, said: "The police were under pressure from this Muslim mob, including clerics, asking for Asia to be killed because she had spoken ill of the Prophet Mohammed.
"So after the police saved her life they then registered a blasphemy case against her." He added that she had been held in isolation for more than a year before being sentenced to death on Monday.
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