Burning paper

Was something holy written on the paper? Not that it makes one iota of difference to the verdict!

Apparently it was some pages of the Koran. It's still only paper and ink. Even the judgement about whether it is holy is subjective. The religion of peace? Yeah, right.

I read that she is around 11, has Down's Syndrome and belongs to a Christian family.

Those people threatening her are utterly evil, but their religiosity is so entrenched that there is little that can be done to change their way of thinking.

All the more reason to keep trying with the younger generation. Education has never been more important.

Women in Pakistan have few rights anyway. This is just another way of keeping them in fear.

It's like the Middle Ages here. One can only hope that with time and, as Bags says, education, attitudes change. Not that attitudes here have changed since the Middle Ages as much as we may like to think.

It's not that simple to do anything about these people: politicians who have tried to change their draconian blasphemy laws have been assassinated.

The best thing for Christian and other non Muslim families is just to get out of Pakistan. it will never be safe for them in the foreseeable future.

According to the BBC website, the authorities have taken the family into protective custody.
It is the mob which are calling for the girl to be killed.
As absent says, perhaps we have not changed since the Middle Ages quite as much as we might like to think.
It is only 27 years since PC Keith Blakelock was killed by a mob on the streets of London.

story here

I feel very sorry for ordinary Muslims who must get so exasperated with the fundamental followers. It's the same with all religions always ruined by the extremists.

Horrendous, she's only a child, can't help thinking they may be trying to make an example of her as the family are Christian. I still remember one of the most ludicrous statements I heard made by a group of Muslims "we are peaceful religion and anyone who say's we aren't we will kill, can't remember what it was in connection with perhaps the Danish cartoons.

Getting the small group of Christians to leave their homes in a sort of Christian enclave just outside Islamabad seems to have been the ulterior motive and it seems to have worked.

Sectarian cleansing. Pakistan, for shame!

(same Abrahamic god, so I class Islam, Christianity and Judaism as sects; just saying, for the pedants' benefit)

Something is deeply flawed in Pakistani culture - it was mainly Pakistani Muslims who sexually abused those young lasses in Lancashire and are now serving long prison terms, it was ethically Pakistani parents in the UK who murdered their westernised daughter, it was mainly English Pakistanis who did the London bombings, and this young lass is not the only one attacked in Pakistan by a mob for blasphemy, out of hatred for Christianity.

I'm beginning to think the atrocities are culturally based, using their religion as an excuse. Perhaps it all dates back to the partition of India and the formation of Pakistan, and the causes and effects of all that. It would be a good subject for a doctoral thesis.

Joan, there was another case very similar to the Rochdale case that was barely reported in the media with white British men doing the grooming. interesting comparison of the two http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/22/how-racism-takes-root

There are many examples of white British men and women committing crimes that are never linked to their race or culture (so many that it's not even worth my linking to them). Why should we judge Asian criminals as if their race is likely to be the cause of their crime when we don't do the same with white criminals?

Oops, sorry, here's the link www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/22/how-racism-takes-root

Guess it is not really even about the alleged burning..it is deep ignorance and bigotry that has become hatred and made people behave in despicable ways. Bigotry is always dangerous .

Religeous extremism of any crede is dangerous thing. And I don't think the extremism in Pakistan is at all what Mohammed had in mind any more than Jesus would have agreed with Mary Tudor.

Effblinder I got my idea of Pakistani culture leading to that abuse from - a Pakistani Englishwoman: Sayeeda Warsi. She had intended to stay quiet because no-one wants to risk being accused of racism, but her father persuaded her to use her high profile and tell the truth.

Just heard on the news that Muslim Clerics in Pakistan are supporting the girl and have said that the blasphemy laws must not be abused, and mob rule has no place.

I watched the new sit-com, Citizen Khan last night about a British Pakistani family and I found it uncomfortable viewing. The family had a westernised elder daughter whose father proudly thought she was the model of a muslim daughter, reading the Koran when really she was reading chick-lit, listening to pop music and sneaking out at night. It would have been really funny if we didn't all know what has actually been happening to some young Pakistani women in real life just because they want to adopt western ways.

I have worked with people from Pakistan and they take the Koran very seriously and I doubt that they would have found the scene with the daughter funny. In fact I don't think they would have found any of it funny so who was the target audience ?
I am British and I didn't find it funny, I won't be watching again, it seemed as if it were made in the 60s it might have been funny then but we have all grown up since then and we know more of the real world

I thought it was very typical of a 60s sit-com, Annika. Love Thy Neighbour springs to mind.

Yes it's very Love Thy Neighbourish. That did a lot to help race relations in the sixties perhaps that's the aim here. However I found some of it a bit uncomfortable. I may watch the next one to see if it improves. (wasn't there a similar one based around an Indian family a few years back?)