Pakistan: Behind the News

Compass Direct News is reporting that at least 10 Christian families in a village in Pakistan’s Punjab Province fled their homes after a throng of area Muslims accused a Christian of blaspheming Islam last Friday.

Yousaf Masih of village No. 68 AR Farmwala, in Khanewal district’s Mian Channu area, told Compass that his brother Yaqub’s grandson, 8-year-old Ihtesham (also known as Sunny), had gone out to fetch ice when boys from a nearby religious school started harassing him. Masih said that his son Dildar Masih, a 26-year-old father of two boys ages 3 and 2, was going to his work as a painter when he saw the boys thrashing his nephew. “Dildar rushed towards them and rescued Sunny from their attack,” Yousaf Masih said. “Sunny told him that the boys were beating him because he would not recite their Kalma, at which Dildar rebuked the boys for forcing Sunny to renounce his religion. He then asked Sunny to return home and left for his workplace.”

Some 60 Muslims led by village prayer leader Qari Hasnain claimed Dildar Masih had blasphemed Islam by abusing the Kalma. The village’s mosque loudspeakers began urging “all the faithful to find the blasphemer and punish him,” but Dildar Masih was caught unaware when the Islamic throng arrived at the house he was painting. “They pounced on him like tigers,” his elderly father said. “They slapped him, kicked him, and my poor son didn’t even know why he was being tortured.”

Remember our brothers and sisters in Pakistan...