This one is a lot more subtle than last nights homocidal extravaganza. In this, he merely extols children to spit on certain nations in Europe while praising other ones. Can you guess the criteria for what makes a good country and what makes a bad one?
Month: August 2009
Pakistan: New Poll Shows 78 Percent of Pakistanis Support Death Penalty for Leaving Islam
From Muslims against sharia:
— 83 percent support stoning adulterers
http://www.realcourage.org/2009/08/pakistan-78-percent-call-for-apostate-deaths/
— Pew Global Press Release
http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=265
— Pew Global Report
http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/265.pdf
— Report page 3 — “The new poll finds broad support for harsh punishments: 78% favor death for those who leave Islam; 80% favor whippings and cutting off hands for crimes like theft and robbery; and 83% favor stoning adulterers.”
— Questions 62b, 62c, and 62d, page 17
— Page 18 – “only 16% of Pakistanis express a favorable view of the U.S.”
— Consistent with previous polls where 75 percent have called for implementation of strict Sharia law by Pakistan government
http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/blog/pakistan.html
— How the Washington Post reports this story…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/13/AR2009081302770.html
Source: REAL
Taxi! Taxi!:cabbie drags man for defending girlfriend
What’s up with cabbies? Seems that some ‘Asian’ !@#$%^&* taxi drivers seem to think that female passengers should succumb to their demands of sexual favours in return for fare. A man who comes to her defense risks being assaulted.
News
Man dragged in street by lewd cabbie
August 13, 2009
A MAN was dragged along the street by a taxi after the driver deliberately trapped his hand in the window in Manchester city centre.
At about 2.30am on Sunday (9 August) a 29-year-old woman flagged down a black cab near to the Star and Garter on Fairfield Street following a night out.
During the journey, the driver made several suggestions that her fare could be waived for sexual favours.
The woman was shaken by the comments so sent a text message to her boyfriend to say that she had been propositioned by the driver and was upset.
She got out of the taxi at the junction of High Street and Copperas Street where her boyfriend was waiting and explained what had been said to her.
The woman went to the cash machine to get her fare and her boyfriend asked the man why he had made suggestive comments.
The 30-year-old victim put his hand on the taxi’s open window while he spoke to the driver, who wound up the window and drove off.
The driver sped up and the man was dragged along the floor for a short distance before managing to get his hand out.
He was taken to hospital and treated for cuts and grazes to his body and face and has since been allowed to go home.
The taxi driver is described as an Asian man, aged in his late 30s, he was clean-shaven with good skin and had short black hair, which was receding slightly. Although he was sat down, he appeared to be short, of medium build and was wearing a pale top.
Detective Constable Emma Cyprien, from Grey Mare Lane CID, said: “The woman was frightened by the driver’s behaviour – if you remember seeing anything when you were out in town on Saturday night that might be relevant, please contact me.”
Anyone with information is asked to call Grey Mare Lane CID on 0161 856 1926 or the independent charity Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.
” They have to kill me if they love God more than they love me”: Rifqa Bary’s plight
The plight of Rifqa Bary, a Sri Lankan teen who has converted from Islam to Christianity is detailed in a thoughtful and informative article by Phyllis Chesler. On viewing honour killings and the associated threats thereof, Chesler writes:
How easily everyone is lulled into viewing fundamentalist Islam as a religion just like any other, as if Islam-on-the-march today is still the “soft,” cosmopolitan, hospitable culture it has occasionally been in the past, in certain cities and for certain monied people.
From Pajamas Media
August 13th, 2009 8:53 am
Honor Killing Averted: Muslim Convert to Christianity Flees For Her Life
Fathima Rifqa Bary Surfaces in Florida
Yesterday afternoon, my living room was filled with lights, cameras, and two very friendly ABC crew men. We were taping an interview for Good Morning America which appeared today and which is preserved at their website. We talked about honor killings and the plight of Fathima Rifqa Bary, the Muslim teenager from Ohio who converted to Christianity and who ran away from home because she knows her father will kill her.
Seventeen year-old Rifqa’s interview is heartbreaking. She knows that if a Muslim leaves Islam, converts to another religion, is an “apostate,” that they are supposed to be killed by any other Muslim; this includes members of her own family.
If someone from a Jewish or Christian fundamentalist home converts out, they may be ostracized, they may be treated as if they had died, but they are not physically killed.
Weeping, the very frightened teenager from Sri Lanka knows that most western journalists (and the police who turned her over to the state and forced her into a public trial), do not believe this can be true. How quickly they forget Salman Rushdie’s plight. How easily everyone is lulled into viewing fundamentalist Islam as a religion just like any other, as if Islam-on-the-march today is still the “soft,” cosmopolitan, hospitable culture it has occasionally been in the past, in certain cities and for certain monied people. Continue Reading →
Hugo Chavez, Israel, and Iran.
Some of my Venezuelan contacts have been telling me things for years now, which are horrifying about Chavez and his ambitions. Today has been an interesting news day in that some of what I have been told for the past 3 years or more has been fully confirmed as you will see in the stories below.
I will take the liberty of stating some of the things I have also been told which have not been confirmed. Take this anyway you like. It is technically merely an insubstantial rumor for the moment.
Chavez is said to be sending out Islamic missionaries of sorts to the more remote rain forest areas, and arming and training tribesman of formerly untouched peoples by civilization. Something every leader of Venezuela since its creation has managed to avoid. He is taking people with no education as we know it, with no history of technology etc, and exposing them to Islam, automatic weapons and making them part of an ideologically based militia. The near future will likely determine the veracity of these claims and rumors.
Now on to a story which Stratfor sent out today from ynet news:
Hezbollah suspected of setting up camp in Venezuela
Senior Israeli political official: Nasrallah established major terrorist base in Venezuela under Chavez sponsorship. Hezbollah members collect intelligence from continent, including Brazil, Argentina, and Peru with objective of carrying out a low-profile revenge attack for assassination of Imad Mughniyeh
Shimon Shiffer
Published: 08.13.09, 13:40 / Israel News
Venezuela has become Hezbollah‘s major terrorist outpost in South America. The Venezuelan regime reportedly provides aid for the terrorist organization that has taken root in its territory, according to a senior Israeli official. Threats have been volleyed back and forth between Hezbollah and Israel recently. Senior Israeli officials warned that if the organization makes an attempt to attack Israeli targets, the response will be unforgiving. Hezbollah responded in kind with a threat of its own that if Israel were to attack Lebanon, the Jewish State will pay a heavy price.
Terrorism
Report: Lieberman accuses Chavez of ties to ‘radical’ Islamists / AFP
Venezuelan president cooperating with ‘radical branches’ of Islam, FM reportedly says Full Story It has recently been made clear that Israel‘s public warnings on the issue stem from intelligence assessments that Hezbollah is investing significant efforts to carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli targets and Jewish institutions in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Peru in a bid to avenge the death of the organization’s late leader Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in Damascus more than a year ago. According to the Israeli source, Hezbollah operatives in South America are collecting intelligence to this end. The Israeli intelligence community estimates that Hezbollah will try as much as possible not to leave identifying footprints that could associate the organization with the attack in the wake of such a strike in a bid to avoid Israel’s heavy hand. In the same vein, it is estimated that the organization will not take public responsibility for a terrorist attack if it were to carry one out successfully.
This is also the reason the organization is purportedly looking to carry out an attack far away from Israel.
Egypt has recently exposed cluster of secret Hezbollah-related terrorist cells that planned on assassinated Israeli Ambassador to Egypt Shalom Cohen. Another cell that planned on targeting Israeli tourists was discovered in Jordan. On this backdrop, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon warned that should Hezbollah attack Israeli targets anywhere around the globe, harsh retaliation will ensue.
During his visit to South America a few weeks ago, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman handed over information to his Latin counterparts on Hezbollah’s activities in the countries he visited. According to the Israeli source, the main objective is to signal to Hezbollah that Israel is aware of the organization’s subversive activities in South America and is keeping close watch.
“We sought to deter them and to say to them that the Israeli response will be difficult to bear should they try to take action against Israelis anywhere,” warned the source.
Western media outlets have reported in recent months about a warming relationship between Iran and Venezuela, under the leadership of anti-American Hugo Chavez. It seems that Hezbollah is taking advantage of the growing friendship in order to establish itself in Latin America.
The US Treasury Department indicted two Venezuelan citizens last year for supporting Hezbollah, and froze their assets in the United States. One of them, a diplomat of Lebanese Shiite ancestry, used his position to transfer funds to Hezbollah and to help members of the organization move between Venezuela and Iran for training. The other is a travel agent from the capital city, Caracas, who aided Hezbollah members in planning attacks.
Western counter-terrorism experts warn that Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have established special units to kidnap Jewish businessmen from Latin America and to bring them to Lebanon.
Now, a video from Fausta’s blog, Fausta, was kind enough to translate this video, which I subtitled. I only did as much as there was in English. For anyone wishing to see the whole program/speech by Hugo, please visit the above link and watch it there. Chavez disguises his contept for Israel and all things related less and less well.
Anti-Israel protestors set to bare ass at Montreal Gay parade
This weekend’s Montreal Gay pride Parade will proceed with a new, colourful twist: anti-Israeli protesters will join the throngs of gays and lesbians marching to be seen and heard. Not that anti-Israel demonstrators don’t take advantage of every opportunity to avail themselves of any available venue; Christ, the United Church of Canada has even stooped to embrace their biased, vitriolic, anti-Semitic sentiment at their 40th general meeting in Kelowna, B.C. under the umbrella of a misguided ” peace and justice” campaign. This years adjunct to the Pride Parade though is particularly peculiar.
Leila Pourtavas, an Iranian-Canadian lesbian contends that the group Q-team is ” bringing a political issue to the table”. Never mind Leila, that the issue that you ‘bring to the table’ is completely void of fact, fairness and historical accuracy; not to mention at it’s root, is heaped with multiple decades of anti-Semitism. Never mind Leila that those who seek boycotts against Israel and their constant vilification of the sovereign state would, as sure as the sky is blue, haul you and your Q-team out to the common ground of Evin Prison in Tehran, tie your wrists and ankles together with chord and lash you, if not execute you for being gay. Remind yourself Leila, that eating where the Ayatollah shits may not be a good idea.
The following article is from the Montreal Gazette.
‘Anti-Israel agitators’ trying to ‘hijack’ gay pride parade: B’nai Brith
Q-Team to march ‘against Israel apartheid’ in Gay Village on Sunday
By Andrew Halfnight, The Gazette
Revellers dance during Montreal’s gay pride parade in 2002.
Photograph by: Gordon Beck, The Gazette
MONTREAL – A Jewish advocacy group butted heads with gay activists critical of Israel this week, sparking a debate about what views are kosher at Montreal’s gay pride parade.
B’nai Brith issued a press release Tuesday warning that “anti-Israel agitators” were planning to “hijack the agenda” of Sunday’s procession through the Gay Village.
But a member of Q-Team, which is leading the contingent “against Israeli apartheid,” disagreed. Continue Reading →
Cargo-bike imam. Music.
This is by far the creepiest one of the three I have subtitled so far. Is this Sasha Baron Cohen meets Andy Kaufman as a Moroccan Muslim? Or is this something much darker. Even if it is meant to lampoon Islam, those are real kids he is speaking to.
Avenging Apostate does good video showing the sophistry of Islam
Bulletin of the Oppression of Women, August 12, 2009
Bulletin of the Oppression of Women, August 12, 2009
Facts without comments – we collect the dots, you connect them
Please distribute this bulletin and send us events that you find.
Mideast
July 26, 2009
Gaza Strip
A Gaza judge tells female lawyers to wear Muslim headscarves when they appear in court.
July 29, 2009
Israel
A father bludgeons his daughter with an iron chain because she owned a cell phone. The victim was a divorced mother of two.
July 30, 2009
Egypt
Egyptian Muslims abduct two Christian girls for conversion.
July 31, 2009
Gaza Strip
Hamas organizes a mass wedding for 450 couples. Please note the ages of the “brides”; all of them shown in the video are young children.
Europe
July 29, 2009
Spain
A Moroccan attempts an Honor Killing by stabbing his daughter 20 times.
July 31, 2009
UK
A girl, 15, is forced to marry illegal immigrant who then raped her and sexually assaulted her little sister.
August 5, 2009
Denmark
Honor is used to silence sexually abused Muslim girls. (translated from Danish) (Original article in Danish)
Asia
July 27, 2009
Pakistan
WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO of an interview with a Pakistani woman who was blinded and hideously disfigured by having hydrochloric acid thrown in her face for refusing to marry her deceased husband’s brother.
July 29, 2009
Bangladesh
A newly married Hindu woman is raped and killed by Muslim thugs. (WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTO)
July 29, 2009
Pakistan
A Pakistani man rapes, then inserts acid in the genitals of his victim.
July 29, 2009
India
A 17-year-old girl was chained by her stepfather to a TV stand for more than a week as her mother was fighting sickness.
August 1, 2009
Pakistan
A man gunned down his sister and her two daughters for one of them traveling with someone not a member of their family.
North America
July 31, 2009
U.S.
An Ohio 16 year old convert to Christianity is still missing after two weeks.
August 1, 2009
Canada
Update on the Honor killings by an Afghani immigrant family.
August 7, 2009
U.S.
A Long Island, NY man shoots his wife, daughter and mother-in-law in suspected Honor killing.
Africa
July 8, 2009
Mali
Women demand a law against female genital mutiliation.
August 3, 2009
Sudan
In a continuing story, police arrested Hussein, a female Sudanese journalist and 12 other women wearing trousers at a Khartoum restaurant on July 3. Two days later 10 of the women accepted a punishment of 10 lashes, but Hussein appealed in a bid to eliminate such rough justice. Women protested against the delaying of Hussein’s trial, and, then when the trial was reconvened, Sudanese police fired tear gas and beat women protesting outside the courtroom.
English now minority language in parts of England.
This may be the single most stunning example of mismanagement on a national scale of ones people language history and culture. Thanks Jdamn for the tip.
English-Speaking Kids now Minority in Inner London Schools (Undhimmi.com)
There are now ten primary schools in the UK where there are no pupils who speak English as their first language
Children who speak English as their first language are now a minority in inner-city London primary schools, official figures showed yesterday. Continue Reading →
Too sexy for the Saudis
Saudi Arabia’s clerics describe satellite groups bringing sexy broadcasts to Riyadh as ” axes that destroy Islam and Muslims”; “Fear God!” they decry. With rock concerts scrapped, a film festival canceled and a cinema banned, entertainment starved Saudis who at 60% are under the age of 30, cannot promise that they will not resort to “other things that you may not like”. The youngest of the Saudi geriatric leadership is 75.
From the National Post
Man’s racy testimony angers Saudi authorities
Paul Handley, Agence France-Presse Published: Tuesday, August 11, 2009
RIYADH — The scandal over a man boasting about his sex life on a popular satellite television show has sparked outbursts against the huge popularity of often-racy offshore broadcasts in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia. Continue Reading →
Muslim genocide: Christians slaughtered
From Pajamas Media
August 12th, 2009 10:04 am
Open Season on Christians in the Islamic World
Religious Intolerance in Action
For centuries, Muslims committed genocide against Hindus in India and what is now Pakistan. Today, in Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Kenya, Turkey, Pakistan, Gaza, and Iran, it’s open season on Christians.
Lubna Hussein, the Sudanese journalist who is facing 40 lashes for “indecency” because she wore trousers—has just been barred from leaving Sudan.
Interestingly, Hussein is a Christian, not a Muslim; she is also a former UN worker. (For the sake of this lawsuit, she immediately quit her UN job which would have provided her with immunity from such prosecution). The Sudanese Islamist authorities are not allowing her to do an interview in Lebanon. Sarkozy, who has called for a ban of the burqa in France, has invited Hussein to Paris. Please note: In Sudan, non-Muslim women are being punished if they do not dress according to Islamist standards.
Christians are being slaughtered in Pakistan by Muslim mobs for refusing to convert; for being Christians; and for allegedly setting fire to a Quran. Young Pakistani Christian girls are being kidnapped, raped, “married” to Muslim men and then forced to convert. Recently, a rampaging Muslim mob burned eight Christians alive, destroyed 50 houses and destroyed a church in the village of Gojra.
Earlier this month, Pakistani Christians finally closed their schools and peacefully protested their country’s “blasphemy” laws.
Last week, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a thirteen-year-old Nigerian Christian girl described how the Boko Haram butchered her pastor (hacked him to death, then set him on fire) for the crime of being a Christian. Captured, the girl and 100 other girls and women were given the choice of converting to Islam or remaining imprisoned. Their male counterparts were given the choice of conversion or death.
The local African Christians cannot understand why the western media have “disregarded the targeted nature of (these) attacks and the brutal murders of Christian pastors.”
In bloodthirsty Iran, two women are in jail and on trial—for being Christian, for having dared to convert from Islam. They are apostates and apostasy, (leaving Islam) is a capital offense.
Maryam Rustampoor, 27, and Marzieh Amirizadeh, 30, have been jailed in Evin Prison for the last five months and have been kept in solitary, tortured, and denied medical treatment. Earlier this week they nevertheless courageously stood up to their interrogator. Although one of the women is in severe pain, they both refused to renounce their faith. The courtroom dialogue resembles the trial of Joan of Arc. The two women claimed that “God had convinced them through the Holy Spirit.” Their interlocutor stated “It is impossible for God to speak with humans,”—to which Amirizadeh replied: “Are you questioning whether God is Almighty?”
Deputy Prosecutor: “You were Muslims and now you have become Christians.”
The Women: “We were born in Muslim families, but we were not Muslims.”
I have been noting the persecution of Christians for some time now. Christianity, which predates Islam in the Middle East and in central Asia, has been under deadly attack from the moment Islam was born. Constantinople was once the capital of Byzantium, Eastern Christianity, but was conquered by Turkish Sultan Mehmet II in the mid-fifteenth century. Thereafter, the most beautiful churches became beautiful mosques, Christians were either converted by the sword, forced to live as second-class citizens, as “dhimmis;” like the Jews, if they were lucky, they were allowed to flee, but only if they left their land, homes, businessness, and wealth behind.
What will happen as more and more fundamentalist Muslims move to the West? The West, despite all its considerable faults for which our leaders keep apologizing, (racism, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism), is nevertheless religiously tolerant and multi-culturally relativist. Will fundamentalist Muslims learn tolerance from us, learn how to live-and-let-live? Or will they keep to themselves and continue to view and treat non-Muslims in the West as…unclean, sub-human, better off dead if not converted?
When will Westerners truly understand that it is not only the West that has engaged in imperialism, racism, colonialism, and capitalism, but that the so-called East has done so too? African and Arab Muslims had a heavy hand in the African slave trade and, to this day, still keep slaves; Islam is a primarily imperialist venture which has colonized huge tracts of other people’s land. And, how would anyone describe the traffic in oil, drugs, and sex slaves which Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan are currently engaged in as anything other than rank capitalism?
But I digress. Will America stand up for religious tolerance abroad or will we view this matter as each country’s sacred, sovereign decision—unless that country is Israel? Yes, ‘tis true: Christians are also persecuted in China, Vietnam, and North Korea—but this is precisely my point. Totalitarian regimes, whether they are communist, Maoist, or Islamist, all forbid freedom of speech and conscience, and always persecute those who choose to practice a religion as opposed to surrendering to the cult of the state.
Will fundamentalist Muslims in America allow their sons and daughters to convert to another religion? Or will they immediately kill them? Stay tuned for more on this very subject.
NEWSFLASH!
Today, Pakistani Christians staged a lunchtime rally at the UN to protest the persecution of Christians in Pakistan. A member of the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam attended. Racqel Reinstein, of HRCARI ,attended and will provide photos of the event. Everyone is interested in joining forces on behalf of human rights.
Sex with no pleasure. Islamic clitorectomies
H/T BNPCrusade for the above. To solidify the link between Islam and GFM, please see Ayaan Hirsi Ali below:
France bans ‘Burquini’
Editor’s note:
I used the category ‘War on woman’s rights’ because Islam typically functions in the following manner. 1. They demand the right to be treated differently than everyone else. 2. They then claim to be offended by how non Muslims act or dress as it violates their religion. 3. they then demand that all non Muslims obey Islamic rules however arbitrary they may be. So what appears to be a violation here, of a woman’s right to choose her swimming garment is in fact, merely the first step towards removing choice from everyone else.
Eeyore.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Paris France: `Burquini’ Banned From Public Swim Hall…….
Indoor Swimming in the nude
or wearing a Burkini is banned
Outdoors: It’s whatever floats your boat
Of course it’s got to be a convert to Islam to push the supposed right to wear a costume that contaminates everyone else that swims in the pool. France seems to swim in the right direction where Islamic coverings are concerned.
H/T: ESW
Muslim woman barred from Paris pool for `burquini’
PARIS – A Muslim woman who tried to go swimming in a head-to-toe “burquini” has been banned from her local pool in the latest tussle between religious practices and secular authority in France.
Officials on Wednesday insisted they banned the woman’s use of the Islam-friendly swimsuit because of France’s unusually strict hygiene standards in pools — not because of official hostility to wearing overtly Muslim garb.
Under the policy, swimmers are prevented from wearing any street-compatible or baggy clothing, such as Bermuda shorts, in favor of figure-hugging suits.
The woman, a 35-year-old convert to Islam identified only as Carole, complained of religious discrimination after trying to go swimming in her burquini in the Paris suburb of Emerainville.
She was quoted as telling the daily Le Parisien newspaper that she had bought the burquini after deciding “it would allow me the pleasure of bathing without showing too much of myself, as Islam recommends.”
“For me this is nothing but segregation,” she added.
The issue of religious attire is a hot topic in France, where head-to-toe burqas or other full-body coverings worn by Muslim fundamentalists are in official disfavor.
French lawmakers recently proposed a ban on the burqa and other voluminous Muslim attire. President Nicolas Sarkozy backs the move, saying such clothing makes women prisoners.
But Daniel Guillaume, a regional official in charge of swimming pools, said Carole’s poolside rebuff had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with public health standards.
He said swimmers throughout France must wear special clothes to the pool, whereas a burquini could be worn all day long, collecting everything from food spills to sweat along the way.
“These clothes are used in public, so they can contain molecules, viruses, et cetera, which will go in the water and could be transmitted to other bathers,” Guillaume said in a telephone interview.
“We reminded this woman that one should not bathe all dressed, just as we would tell someone who is a nudist not to bathe all naked,” he said.
Guillaume said France’s public health standards require all pool-goers to don appropriate attire — swimsuits for women and tight, swim-specific briefs for men — and caps to cover their hair. Bathers also must shower before entering the water.
Guillaume said Carole had tried to file a complaint at a local police station, but her request was turned down as groundless.
Carole told the daily Le Parisien she would protest with the help of anti-discrimination groups.
The Associated Press could not reach the woman for comment Wednesday.
Sectarian violence hits Pakistani town
More on last weeks slaughter of Christians by Pakistani Muslims.
Of course it is bad that Christians died,” he added. “But they provoked the Muslims here. I don’t understand why everyone is on their side.”
On a street in the small Punjabi town of Gojra, house after house stands gutted and looted.
Hameed family. Father, son and relative.
BBC NEWS…One home in particular is the focus of attention. The windows and doors are gone, what is left of the furniture lies gnarled inside, and some of the ceilings have collapsed. People are peering into a small bedroom at the back of the building.
It is from here that the charred bodies of six members of the Hameed family, from Pakistan’s minority Christian community, were recovered. The youngest of the dead was four-year-old Mousa.
We found his father, Almass Hameed, 49, in a crowded hospital ward nearby.
‘Shocked and crying’
“He was such a bright boy. His teachers complained that he was cheeky at times, but nobody could doubt how clever he was. But now he’s gone,” Mr Hameed said, breaking down.
He described how an angry Muslim mob came through the area, known here as the Christian Colony.
“I think there were thousands,” he said. “My elderly father went out to see what was happening and they shot and killed him. We were all shocked and crying. Before we knew it, they were breaking into the house.”
Mr Hameed explained how he and nine other members of the family hid in the bedroom as the house was over-run.
“We could hear them smashing everything and dividing our belongings amongst themselves,” he said. “Then they started beating on the door saying they would teach us a lesson and burn us alive.”
Soon after, a fire was raging through his house.
“We just couldn’t breathe,” he said. “I grabbed my eldest son and managed to get out of the room through the flames, my brother came out with one of my daughters, but the rest were stuck and we had no way of rescuing them.”
As well as his father and Mousa, Mr Hameed lost his 11 year-old daughter, his wife, a brother, a sister-in-law and her mother.
“It was like the most horrific movie. They destroyed our lives.”
‘Fired shots’
Tensions had risen after allegations that Christians in the nearby village of Korrian had torn up and burnt pages of the Koran at a wedding a few days earlier.
They started it,” 19-year-old Omar Ali Raza said in Gojra’s marketplace.
“We Muslims are the victims. We gathered to protest about what they did to the Koran in Korrian and just wanted to walk through their area, but they threw stones at us and fired shots.”
“Of course it is bad that Christians died,” he added. “But they provoked the Muslims here. I don’t understand why everyone is on their side.”
But an elderly Muslim man passing by interrupts. “The responsibility is with the one who actually burns the Koran, not all Christians,” he said. “Here, we live together, and there were no problems before this.”
As it happens, a local police chief, Ahmed Javaid, said he believed that the claim that Christians desecrated the Koran was not true in the first place. Continue Reading →