Criminal law, Free Speech, International, Media, Politics, Religion, Society

Muslims in Pakistan Raid Police Station, Beat Mentally Ill Man To Death, And Burn His Body For Blasphemy

Bahawalpur Pakistan was the scene of a horrific crime after thousands of Muslims were told by religious leaders to raid a police station and punish a man accused of ripping pages out of a Koran. The mentally ill man was accused of blasphemy, but never saw a courtroom. The mob pulled him from the police station, beat him to death and then set his body on fire.

Pakistan’s blasphemy law imposed the death penalty on those who insult Muhammad or the Koran. However, no charges are being considered against the people who used the loudspeakers of the local mosques to send the mob into the police station to brutally murder the man. Thousands responded, burning police cars and wounding officers before breaking into the station. Even the police chief’s home was attacked.

I am not sure why (since this took hours) additional help from the military or other police units could not be acquired.

I have written extensively on the rise of blasphemy or hate speech prosecutions against religious critics in the West. The Obama Administration has been working with Pakistan and other Muslim nations to develop an international standard for blasphemy prosecutions. The West has steadily yielded to the demands of religious groups that free speech must be curtailed in the name of faith. At the same time, West governmental and religious leaders have denounced agnostics and atheists as one of the greatest threats facing the West (here and here and here and here). President Obama and Hillary Clinton have been facilitating this trend by working with Muslim nations to develop an international standard allowing for the prosecution of those who insult religion. The Administration has drawn a dangerous line with Muslim countries in first supporting the concept of an international blasphemy standard. As I have mentioned before, the efforts of the Obama Administration to work with these countries on an international blasphemy standard is a threat to free speech around the world. After first supporting an international blasphemy standard, the Administration sought to get Pakistan and other countries to adopt the Brandenburg standard as the basis for such prosecutions. This case also shows why the use of the Brandenburg standard is so dangerous in the hands of such officials who view free speech as the cause of imminent violence. Because any joke or image of the Prophet can trigger violence, the standard is immediately satisfied in countries like Egypt, which can then claim some legal legitimacy under the standard created with the United States.

Of course, it remains a mystery how such deeply religious people would believe that God wants them to beat a mentally ill man to death and burn his body — after attacking police officers and destroying property. Such horrific scenes will continue absent prosecutions of the ring leaders. The failure to bring such charges would add an element of complicity to this unspeakable crime.

Source: Brisbane Times as first seen on Reddit

56 thoughts on “Muslims in Pakistan Raid Police Station, Beat Mentally Ill Man To Death, And Burn His Body For Blasphemy”

  1. It is not raining for two days straight. But overcast.
    The temp is about 70 and the humidity not noticeable.
    Swedes get uncomfortable at 90, that’s a heat wave.
    I do at 80, but that’s age.

    How are they playing ít in the news? Local? National?

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  2. Blouise,
    It is a cool 100 degrees again here in Northern Illinois for the 3rd day in a row! We could use some Swedish cool air…and rain.

  3. id707,

    Nothing like a heatwave on the shores of the Great Lakes! It is downright miserable outside. Not supposed to let up till Sunday.

    Do you get heatwaves in Sweden or maybe the better question is: What constitutes a heatwave in Sweden … how high does the temperature have to climb?

  4. Blouise,

    Thanks for letting us plebes look over the elites’ shoulders. Snark, snark, guffaw, guffaw. How’s the temps in those rarefied altitudes (literally, symbolically, wittily???)
    Missed ya’.

    1. The court, and the mob are evil. Jesus is not in a killing mob. Gog ,and Magog will have humans that want tr kill trying to take the city of God, revelation 20 KJV. The humans that kill are evil. The Koran should be destroyed. All Muslims need to destroy a book that makes them kill.

  5. mespo,

    I don’t know if you’re done for the day … hopefully you’ll come back around and see this.

    Late, late Weds. night I caught a Charlie Rose “round table discussion” with several leading historians, two of whom are presently “living with” Jefferson in preparation for presenting us with new books on the third President. The overall topic was Obama from a historian’s standpoint but a couple of remarks about Jefferson were very titillating and I thought you might find the program interesting. It’s a little under an hour and here’s the link:

    http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12439

  6. This is what happens when religiosity replaces education and common sense.

  7. Blouise:

    “Ah, Voltaire … so intimately in touch with the “spirit that underlies all expressions of life” … the Enlightenment lives on.”

    ***********************************

    A witty saying proves nothing.
    ~Voltaire

    And so it does …

  8. “It’s no mystery to Voltaire:

    ‘Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’ ” (mespo)

    Ah, Voltaire … so intimately in touch with the “spirit that underlies all expressions of life” … the Enlightenment lives on.

  9. I wonder what kind of situation would unfold if we continue on this lecherous path of enforcing criminal blasphemy laws. I can easily see a situation where someone in the U.S. writes a story some religious wonk in another country finds offensive and due to the reach of the internet claims jurisdiction in their country for blasphemy. Then, the foreign ministry in that country issues an extradiction request and our state department grants extradition per treaty and some judge allows it.

    Say goodbye to the First Amendment then.

  10. BarkinDog 1, July 6, 2012 at 8:40 am

    If you can find a Koran in your vicinity: rip the pages out. Send them to the Pakistani embassy in DC. Send them to that Muslim Congressman cited in the first article. If you dont have any postage then hang them in the appropriate place in lieu of the Sears Roebuck Catalogue in the nearest outhouse.
    ———————————–
    Would you do the same to a Bible? ok, if that’s what you want to do, but please don’t exhort others to do the same. It’s an act of incitement. No matter how wrong-headed one might think of the religious, they think similarly of those who are not. Maybe we, including, especially, those who would stone, burn, or shun should just leave each other alone.
    ============================
    Criminal charges should be brought against those inciting the violence in addition to those doing the violence in Pakistan.

  11. Religion can be defined as an expression of insanity. One criteria would be to say that those who for periods of more that x months believe in supernatural beings, supernatueral happenings, and guidance from these sources are so declared aa mentally incompetent.

    Now if the person is peacefully inclined, with ethics of suitable social nature, says nothing as to their insanity, ie relation to reality.

    I vote for Voltaire. Wish he were still around to help deal with today’s problems. But his words still are pertinent.

  12. Religion is a mental illness. It operates like a computer virus that finds a chink in the software to insert itself and do damage, only the concept of “religion” fits into a flaw in human psychology and causes people to go mad.

    I say that in terms of the fanatical variety that leads someone to take violent actions because of their beliefs about some Invisible Sky Wizard, not for those who use religious tenets as a basis for leading a kinder, more moral life. I used to respect the concept of religion, until I started working as a nurse in psychiatric wards and saw how often paranoid schizophrenics would assert their murderous fantasies in terms of religious ideas. “God wants me to kill” and “The Devil causes me to ______.” Lots of mentally ill people have violent desires, but religion provides a handle for them to hold onto and justify those desires.

    It doesn’t matter whether it’s Islam, Christianity, Hinduism — check out the Hindu-on-Muslim violence in India — or any of the past religions that have fallen on the dung heap of history (as will the current cults that humanity now ascribes to.) It would be great if beings from outer space would arrive on Earth to say “All your silly stories about god-ghosts are the babblings of a species that has been stuck on an isolated rock and thinks that you are all that there is. Here’s how the universe really works.” Only if “they” ever did come, the religious nut-jobs of ALL faiths would just say “Those beings are demons sent by the Devil” and keep on believing in their chosen stupidity anyway.

  15. ithcinBayDog. Ig Latin Pay. Everything in moderation. Support India in its conflicts with Pakistan. Ask your Congressman to support legislation getting the U.S. out of Afghanistan and Pakistan or any Stan. Stan The Man is over 90 so leave him out of it.

  16. If you can find a Koran in your vicinity: rip the pages out. Send them to the Pakistani embassy in DC. Send them to that Muslim Congressman cited in the first article. If you dont have any postage then hang them in the appropriate place in lieu of the Sears Roebuck Catalogue in the nearest outhouse.

  17. “Of course, it remains a mystery how such deeply religious people would believe that God wants them to beat a mentally ill man to death and burn his body — after attacking police officers and destroying property.”

    ***************************

    It’s no mystery to Voltaire:

    “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

  18. “The Obama Administration has been working with Pakistan and other Muslim nations to develop an international standard for blasphemy prosecutions.”

    I think it should be the same as the standard in the United States:

    In this country, the full and free right to entertain any religious belief, to practice any religious principle, and to teach any religious doctrine which does not violate the laws of morality and property and which does not infringe personal rights is conceded to all. The law knows no heresy, and is committed to the support of no dogma, the establishment of no sect. The right to organize voluntary religious associations to assist in the expression and dissemination of any religious doctrine, and to create tribunals for the decision of controverted questions of faith within the association and for the ecclesiastical government of all the individual members, congregations, and officers within the general association, is unquestioned.

    Watson v Jones, 80 U.S. 679, 729-730, (1871). The ecclesiastical courts should only have the power to suspend membership or expel members, not to punish them corporeally.

  19. You sure you didn’t confuse this with the South…….USA…… Accused and convicted on what…..

  20. international blasphemy standard, hhhmmmm…. maybe there should be an international color standard, international hands clasped while praying standard, an international intelligence standard, an international beauty standard, and international laughing standard, an international handshake/bowing standard…… disturbing and only leads to more citizen “judgments.” God help us…..

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