A court in Pakistan has sentenced a Christian man to death for blasphemy, his lawyer said, over an incident that triggered a riot in the country’s second-largest city.
Sawan Masih was convicted of insulting the prophet Muhammad during the course of a conversation with a Muslim friend in the Joseph Colony neighbourhood of Lahore in March last year.
More than 3,000 Muslims rioted, torching about 100 Christian homes in Joseph Colony, after the allegations against Masih emerged.
Naeem Shakir, one of Masih’s lawyers, told AFP: “The judge has announced the death sentence for Sawan Masih. We will appeal the sentence in the Lahore high court.”
The entire concept of blasphemy, is not just nonsense, it is a very dangerous idea that results in real harm being inflicted upon innocent individuals.
Now let me ask you a rather serious question, do you think that Muhammad was a prophet? If you are not Muslim, and that includes that vast majority of humans on the planet, then you would probably assert that he was not, and might instead suggest a variety of alternative thoughts. For example, he never actually existed, or that he was deluded, etc…
If you would hold some variation of one of those views, then that is blasphemy.
If you also happened to live in Pakistan or were simply visiting and expressed that view, then the sentence that could be imposed upon you is “death”.