A judge ruled that charges of Quran-burning were fabricated but she lost her job and has to live in hiding.
by Massimo Introvigne
In May 2023, “Bitter Winter” reported that a Christian office worker called Musarrat Bibi, and a Muslim gardener, Muhammad Sarmad, had been falsely accused of burning pages of the Holy Quran at the Government Girls High School in Tehsil Arifwala, in Pakpattan Sharif, the capital city of the Pakpattan district, located in the Punjab province of Pakistan. They were saved by the police from mob lynching, but charged with blasphemy, a crime punished in Pakistan with the death penalty, and committed to trial.
To his credit, Arifwala Additional Sessions Judge Tariq Mahmood resisted the pressure by local Islamic radicals and on December 8 acquitted both defendants. It came out that the rumors had been spread by a Muslim teacher who promised vengeance to Musarrat Bibi after she refused to clean a school’s toilet claiming this was not part of her job description.
One can conclude that all’s well that ends well, although the duo will never forget the terror of having to confront a lynching mob. However, for the Christian Musarrat Bibi being found not guilty at trial did not mean that her problems ended.
She reports that she keeps receiving daily death threats by phone. She has lost her job, as the school told her that even if she is innocent keeping her would put the school at risk of mob or terrorist attacks. A penniless widow, she had to abandon her home and now lives in hiding with her daughter.
Pakistan’s blasphemy laws cause tragedies when those unjustly accused are declared guilty. But even the life of those the courts declare innocent is ruined forever.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
