An 11 year old Christian girl, Rifta Masih, has been arrested in Mehrabadi, Pakistan for blasphemy. The child blasphemer, who has Down's Syndrome, was reportedly severely beaten by a crowd of people, and may face the death penalty for burning pages of the Koran along with the fact that other pages she carried with her were housed in a bag of waste, which she was trying to put into a waste bin. She should, in spite of her disability, evidently known better. Or her God should have kept her safer or perhaps have given her better judgment or something.
Yes, this is what passes for blasphemy in Pakistan, a place in which reasonable people, like Salman Taseer and Shabaz Bhatti, gave their lives trying to drum sense into the public's mind. So a disabled child may die, because with her lack of intellectual capacity and understanding, she insulted the holy book of Islam. This is justice?
I had planned to make some snarky remarks about a$$holes like Todd Akin and their form of profanity against reason, but frankly, I'm really just too absorbed in thinking of what will happen to this poor 11 year old child, who probably just wants her mother, and who will be subject to who knows what horrors. Did she even get medical care after being beaten? It's too horrifying to contemplate. As the BBC's World Service says, few people at this point, after the deaths of Taseer and Bhatti, will stand up to the extremist mob, even if it means a child must die for doing something when she didn't have cognizance of giving offense.
Another Bhatti, Dr. Paul Bhatti, Minister of Harmony *cough* (no idea if he's a brave relation to assassinated Minority Minister Shahbaz Bhatti) is evidently trying to get her an attorney.
Some days, I just lose all hope for reason in this world.
© Bright Nepenthe, 2012
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