April 21, 2005
Almost funny if it weren't trueNews
This almost feels like it should be a scene from Kung Fu Hustle except for
1) the unhappy ending and
2) it's sadly all too true -
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani man accused of desecrating the Koran was shot dead Wednesday after being chased by an angry crowd.Ashiq Nabi, in his thirties, was accused of being disrespectful to Islam's holy book and had been in hiding since Monday, a senior police official said.
...Witnesses said the man was chased through fields and climbed a tree to get away from an angry crowd of up to 500 men. When he refused to come down, someone shot him dead, they said.
Although the article doesn't really tell us how he desecrated the Koran, one of the mob's motives here was apparently a type of vigilante justice. It appears that relative at least to this little slice of society, Pakistani courts almost come across as bastions of liberal due process. -
Blasphemy, including desecrating the Koran, is a capital offence in deeply Islamic Pakistan and carries the death sentence, but convictions have always been turned down by high courts because of a lack of evidence.
I guess in conjunction with the tragic death in India tab, we'll start a count of the ones in Pakistan too.
vinod on April 21, 2005 09:24 AM in News · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
I am glad they made an example out of him. This will teach them a lesson.
In B-Desh, the local brother from another mother, we don't shoot criminals via mob justice, we simply beat them to death.
Petty theives and market pickpockets regularly get pulped, yet even the thought of dying the death of a thousand chappal-slaps fails to deter future pickpocketeers...
And yet Muslims refer to the rest of us as barbarians (or worse). I'm impressed, normally you just can't buy irony of that quality anymore.
I guess this means we'll be waiting a few more years before the Monty Python guys will begin production on the "Life of Abdul".