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Last week a reader drew my attention to the suffering of a young Christian Pakistani girl called Asia Bibi. Ms Bibi, as you may already be aware (it is to my shame that I was not), is currently in prison facing the frighteningly common charge of ‘blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad’, a charge she denies.
According to ChristianToday: “Bibi was accused of blasphemy in Pakistan for sharing her faith in God to other women… She was then sentenced to death, although an appeal has been filed at the Supreme Court with no news yet on when her case will be heard. But time is running out for the Christian woman since her health has been steadily declining… She’s suffering from internal bleeding. She requires urgent medical treatment. She vomits blood. She suffers terrible pain, and she can hardly eat.”
Though pressure is being relentlessly applied by Christian organisations and charities in the West, Ms Bibi’s fate remains uncertain. Many have been punished viciously for the same ‘crime’ before, and since Ms Bibi herself is surely aware of this, one can only attempt to imagine the mental torment she must be experiencing. In July of this year, Pakistani authorities announced that the death sentence is ‘suspended’, but this is subject to challenge from the country’s powerful religious establishment. As of the time of writing, Ms Bibi is in limbo.
Of course, this story will not surprise any regular visitor of this site. We all know well enough the reality of Islam and its relations with competing belief systems. Those who wish Ms Bibi to die are being entirely faithful to the commandments of Islamic law and follow a precedent dating back to the Islamic Salaf (the early companions of the Prophet). This is what Islam does. We have no right to recoil in shock anymore.
But it is nevertheless worth remarking – in case there remains any doubt – that cases like this wholly exonerate the West from any obligation to uphold or respect ‘multiculturalism’ for the benefit of Muslims. Since Muslims themselves reject and despise the idea of multiculturalism, why on Earth should we allow them to enjoy its privileges?
Years ago in America, during the white heat of the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ controversy, the host of Fox’s satirical ‘Red-eye’ show was dead on the nail when he proposed that the mosque should only go ahead if a Synagogue was built in Mecca (the source of much of the project’s funds) first.
It really is as simple as that. Quid pro quo. Like for like.
Multiculturalism is not the natural state of the world. It is a modern invention, the product of a warped and unaccountable academia. It is unique to the industrialised West and considered bizarre and self-destructive to every nation outside of it. Japan wouldn’t allow a Mosque to be built in the shade of a Shinto Shrine. Saudi Arabia wouldn’t allow a Synagogue to be built in the shade of a Mosque. Only the West remains open to all and sundry. Is that fair?
No, simply put, it isn’t, and so a shift in policy is long overdue. No more Mosques in the Western World. If the Muslim world will not tolerate Christianity, the West has the right to expel Islam wholly from its midst.
D, LDN.
Defend the Modern World 
Well, to be fair, a number of societies in ancient times were, we could call them, ´Multicultural´. It is however true that a stately support for multiculturalism really is something quite new.
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Well, the Roman Empire was certainly a multi-racial society with Blacks, Arabs and Jews. I wouldn’t call it a multi-cultural one though. Even in polytheistic societies, a strong central culture still predominates (India etc..).
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Bibi will be assassinated the moment she steps out of prison. And the perps will get away with it. Pakistan will never answer for any of this.
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I hope she has the good sense to leave the country and sever all ties with it. Europe won’t be safe for her. She should go to America like Rushdie and Hirsi Ali. America is the last safe haven.
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Australia or Canada could offer to take her and her family. Canada has previously taken in another victim of the ‘blasphemy’ law – a little girl named Rimsha Masih, with her family.
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Although I believe its time for a major rethink on the subject of asylum, particularly in the case of those whose beliefs undermine Western freedoms and democracy, we should continue to offer sanctuary in cases like this. Asia Bibi has shown huge courage in first daring to express her beliefs and then refusing to submit to Islam in the face of a violent mob who attacked her and her family, led by the local imam. The likelihood she will be killed if she is ever released is extremely high. Lets grant them asylum if they want to come to the UK, and give them police protection because of course they will need it here nowadays too, thanks to multiculturalism.
Shame on the western media, including the BBC, for under-reporting her case and those of others like her. Shame on the world for allowing her suffering to continue.
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I agree. We should display solidarity with Christians and other religious minorities. Real asylum cases are rare these days, but this definitely qualifies.
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Christians in the Middle East have nowhere to go. There are no Christian havens in the region except areas of Lebanon and Armenia. It would be inhumane to expect them to lie down and die. Then again, it’s also depressing that they have to concede defeat by fleeing.
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You take action for Asia Bibi by writing to the PM of Pakistan via your local Amnesty International organisation. Just search her name and there is a proforma to fill out, or you can write your own.
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It’s worth a try, but I have little trust in the government of Pakistan. I suppose it’s all we can do for the moment.
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I have been following Asia’s case for years. The British Pakistani Christian Association and also the Barnabas Fund have been assisting her and her family for years, through the imprisonment and endless court cases.
One small correction: she is not a young girl, she is a middle-aged married woman, with grown and half-grown children, and her poor husband with the children have only been permitted the briefest of visits with her, at long intervals.
She and her family are Catholics, and it is an absolute disgrace that Pope Francis I has not publicly spoken up on her behalf; he could try embarrassing the Pakistanis by organising a papal visit to Pakistan and then, once there, publicly and loudly declaring an intention of visiting Asia Bibi in prison in order to pray with her and take her the Sacraments.
The British Pakistani Christian Association have held a number of protests – rallies -outside the Pakistani High Commission in London, and also outside no 10 Downing Street, on her behalf and on behalf of the many other Christians in Pakistan who have been – always falsely – accused of ‘blasphemy’ by vindictive Muslim bullies. (Muslims in Pakistan also use the – sharia-based – blasphemy law to attack other Muslims against whom they conceive a grudge, and against Hindus, but I recall reading somewhere that the vast majority of people accused of ‘blasphemy!’ in Pakistan are Christians.) The BPCA has repeatedly lobbied British parliamentarians; they are asking that Britain attach some ‘strings’ to the ‘aid’ that it pours into Pakistan’s gaping maw, by making that aid conditional upon the decent treatment of non-Muslim minorities. i.e. – “Let Asia Bibi go, free and clear, or your ‘aid’ stops. Now.”
Keeping her case in the public eye by all means, and making as much noise as possible, so that the Pakistanis know that she hasn’t been forgotten about, is very necessary. And putting the wind up them by lobbying for the cessation of all that ‘aid’ aka ‘jizya’/ ‘tribute’ that Pakistan has been raking in, might do some good.
My own personal thought, for some time, has also been that Aussies, South African Christians, New Zealanders, Indians, East Indians, and British could be lobbying our respective *cricketing* bodies and demanding that a ‘cricket boycott’ of Pakistan be imposed, because of Pakistan’s gross human rights abuses perpetrated against all non-Muslim minorities. If a cricketing boycott/ sports boycott could be imposed on South Africa during the apartheid years, why can’t a similar boycott be imposed on Pakistan to punish it for *its* practice of what amounts to a religion-based apartheid system? Christians and Hindus and Sikhs in Islamic Pakistan are constantly, systematically, deliberately oppressed and discriminated against.
I think that a concerted public shunning of that kind just *might* get through to some of the less-fanatically-Muslim Pakistani elite, enough to irritate them into reining in the sharia pushers now and again.
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Pope Francis is very suspect. He seems to value Muslims just as highly as Christians. I understand that Christianity requires love for one’s enemy, but one would have thought that his private sympathies would lie with his own communion.
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That’s a good idea, a boycott of the Pakistan cricket team.
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Now its 2020, and Asia Bibi finally was freed and lives free in Canada.
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Yes. A very happy ending.
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