Family waits to see if mother, accused of blasphemy, will be hanged
In this village in Pakistan’s Punjab province a tearful 12-year-old girl ponders if the Pakistani government will soon hang her mother.
“Whenever I see her picture I cry,” Isham Masih told CNN. “I want my mother back. That’s what I’m praying for.”
This month a Pakistani court sentenced Isham’s mother, 45-year-old Asia Bibi, to death, not because she killed, injured or stole, but simply because she said something.
Prosecutors say Bibi, who is a Christian, broke Pakistan’s strict blasphemy law by insulting Islam and the prophet Muhammad, a crime punishable by death or life imprisonment according to Pakistan’s penal code.
The alleged incident happened in June 2009 when Bibi, a field worker, was picking fruit in a village two hours west of Lahore. Prosecutors say when Bibi dipped her cup into a bucket of drinking water during a lunch break, her co-workers complained the water had been contaminated by a non-Muslim.
The town cleric, who made the initial complaint against Bibi, called her death sentence one of the happiest moments of his life.
“Tears of joy poured from my eyes,” Qari Salim told CNN.
The clerics tears are in stark contrast to those shed by Bibi’s daughter Isham, who wants her mother to live.
Absolute, unbelievably disgusting evil.
Yep. The law is the law, and the law says the bitch has it coming. What a spineless, craven POS.
