Late one night, the imam Shabir Ahmad looked up from prayers at his mosque to see a 15-year-old boy approaching with a plate in his outstretched left hand. On it was the boy’s freshly severed right hand.
Mr. Ahmad did not hesitate. He fled the mosque and left the village, in eastern Punjab Province.
Earlier that night, Jan. 10, he had denounced the boy as a blasphemer, an accusation that in Pakistan can get a person killed — even when the accusation is false, as it was in this case.
The boy, Anwar Ali, the son of a poor laborer, had been attending an evening prayer gathering at the mosque in the village, Khanqah, when Mr. Ahmad asked for a show of hands of those who did not love the Prophet Muhammad. Thinking the cleric had asked for those who did love the prophet, Anwar’s hand shot up, according to witnesses and the boy’s family.
He realized his mistake when he saw that his was the only hand up, and he quickly put it down. But by then Mr. Ahmad was screaming “Blasphemer!” at him, along with many others in the crowd. “Don’t you love your prophet?” they called, as the boy fled in disgrace.
Anwar went home, found a sharp scythe and chopped off his right hand that same night. When he showed it to the cleric, he made clear it was an offering to absolve his perceived sin.
.. Such cases almost never make it to court, however. The merest accusation that blasphemy has occurred has the power to arouse lynching or mob violence.
.. The governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, was assassinated by his own bodyguard in 2011, after Mr. Taseer criticized the country’s blasphemy laws and defended a Christian woman who had been falsely accused under them. The assassin is a national hero to many devout Pakistanis: His jail cell has become a pilgrimage site, and a mosque was renamed to honor him.
.. On Monday, Pakistan lifted a three-year-old ban on YouTube, which it had shut down because of accusations of airing anti-Islamic videos. The government announced that Google, which owns YouTube, had agreed to give it the right to block objectionable content. The Pakistani government blocks thousands of web pages it considers offensive.
Marco Rubio Sells Out His Principles
Rubio said, “Barack Obama does not believe that America is a great global power. Barack Obama believes that America is a arrogant global power that needs to be cut down to size.” These are lies. Since becoming a national political figure roughly a decade ago, Obama has uttered millions of words about America. In addition to his public statements, his private comments have made it into the media countless times. He’s never said anything remotely like what Rubio suggests.
If he had, Rubio would have quoted him.
.. Earlier this month, he claimed the president has “deliberately weakened America.” Donald Trump said Obama’s passport wasn’t American. Now, to compete with Trump, Rubio is saying Obama’s heart isn’t American.
.. Later in the evening, the moderators asked about Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Christie and John Kasich said they disagreed. Jeb Bush disagreed at length. Rubio did not. Instead, he began his answer by praising Trump for having “tapped in to some of that anger that’s out there about this whole issue because this president has consistently underestimated the threat of ISIS.” Then, after talking about how awful ISIS is, Rubio declared that, “When I’m president. If we do not know who you are, and we do not know why you are coming when I am president, you are not getting into the United States of America.” The listener who didn’t already know Rubio’s position might well have thought he supports Trump’s plan.
..Back in 2013, when nativist Iowa Congressman Steve King tried to use the Boston marathon bombing as a pretext to limit legal immigration, Rubio responded that, “We should really be very cautious about using language that links these two things in any way.” Not anymore... In reality, Rubio’s answer has nothing do with ISIS and everything to do with the fact that, having planned to run as the man who could help Republicans embrace multicultural America, he now realizes that most of them want to build a wall to keep it... Unlike Bush, he possesses the political talent to effectively challenge the paranoia and bigotry coursing through today’s GOP. Instead, he’s rolled over. At the debate, he left absolutely no doubt: His strategy for defeating Trump is to ape Trump. Bush may have lost the debate, as he has lost every debate, but he lost with dignity.
Al-Azhar University: Most Prestigious Sunni Universtity
Al-Azhar University (ahz-har; Arabic: جامعة الأزهر (الشريف) Jāmiʻat al-Azhar (al-Sharīf), IPA: [ˈɡæmʕet elˈʔɑzhɑɾ eʃʃæˈɾiːf], “the (honorable) Azhar University”) is a university in Cairo, Egypt. Associated with Al-Azhar Mosque in Islamic Cairo, it is Egypt’s oldest degree-granting university and is renowned as “Sunni Islam’s most prestigious university”[1] In addition to higher education, Al-Azhar oversees a national network of schools with approximately two million students.[2]
Phil Vischer: Dude Ranches in Texas with Guest Bob Roberts
Muslim imams and evangelical pastors camping together on a dude ranch in Texas?? Some kind of bizarre reality show coming to cable this Fall? Nope! It’s the real life work of Texas megachurch pastor Bob Roberts – who joins us on the podcast to describe his unlikely and somewhat controversial role as a bridge between conservative Christian leaders and their Muslim counterparts.