Blasphemous pee
An eight-year-old Hindu boy is being held in protective police custody in east Pakistan after becoming the youngest person ever to be charged with blasphemy in the country.
Not a record Pakistan should be trying to set.
The boy’s family is in hiding and many of the Hindu community in the conservative district of Rahim Yar Khan, in Punjab, have fled their homes after a Muslim crowd attacked a Hindu temple after the boy’s release on bail last week. Troops were deployed to the area to quell any further unrest.
Muslims and Hindus duke it out again! Nostalgia for Partition or the Babri Masjid riots or both?
The boy is accused of intentionally urinating on a carpet in the library of a madrassa, where religious books were kept, last month. Blasphemy charges can carry the death penalty.
Ffs. It’s a room, a carpet. Get the carpet cleaned or get a new one. Move on. If the story is even true, which it probably isn’t.
If gods are real they can’t be harmed by humans pissing or saying things. Gods don’t need humans to punish other humans on behalf of the gods. The whole idea is stupid as well as murderous.
Blasphemy laws have been disproportionately used in the past against religious minorities in Pakistan. Although no blasphemy executions have been carried out in the country since the death penalty was introduced for the crime in 1986, suspects are often attacked and sometimes killed by mobs.
All because people choose to invent irritable gods who pick on smaller weaker beings – to invent them and then to worship them. Religion is like an instruction manual for bullies. Delete and start over.
OB:
The reality is worse from a theological perspective. Our God-given reason leads scientific researchers to conlude that the Universe is 13.8 billion years olld, so the 4004 BC creation date proposed by Bishop Ussher is a tad on the light side. And the theology gets worse from a realist perspective. The God or gods who created the Universe and all the laws of nature on scales going from the intergalactic down to the interaction of quarks in every atomic nucleus are easily offended, and are heavily into blood sacrifice. Christians are urged to believe that God is a trinity, and the Father part of it sent the Son part of it down to Earth to be executed in the maximum possible pain as payment to Himself for the Original Sin committed in the Garden of Eden, around 4004 BC.
And what was that Original Sin? Eating of the Forbidden fruit that grew on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. (It’s all there in Genesis 3.) And who in the Ancient World were the people into the discussion of questions like ‘what is good?’ and ‘what is evil?’ Why, philosophers of course, who ever since at least 4004 BC have been making life hard for theologians..
The Original Sin was Philosophy.
It’s the mob violence that frightens me. Hindus mobbing Muslims for being Muslims, Muslims mobbing apostate pissers. Their religious feelings have been hurt. You can’t reason with a mob because they know they’re right and they can’t hear one person reasoning. (What is the sound of one person reasoning? could be a koan.)
This is also convenient for the priestly class, because they can keep their hands relatively clean. “What, we only incited them! What they chose to do after that is entirely their own affair. Islam is the religion of peace. Muhammad (PBUH) said so.”
I don’t understand that value of gods if they are so jealous, so easily hurt, so weak that they have to send earthly governments after apostates to enforce their rules. All religions are religions of peace as long as you dont do something wrong, or beleve wrong, or think wrong. Then the eyes and hands are hacked off and out, the whips start cracking, the fires start burning flesh, the sword swings in a merciful gesture of peace as it removes the apostate’s head.
This comment stands out as the odd one in an otherwise decent coverage of this news.
I wonder which part of this news story gave you the impression that it is a two-sided fight in which “Muslims and Hindus duke it out again!”
You know this problem could confront any minority in Pakistan, even Muslims who are not considered Muslims by the mainstream Islam.
In the recent past, there were similar cases against other minorities, for example Christians. Whether it is Hindus or Christians or Ahmediyyas or any other minority, they will face the same painful situation as the family of this boy is facing now.
This was actually the entire point of the infamous
MapplethorpeAndres Serrano piece, Piss Christ, which displayed a crucifix suspended in his urine. I saw the entire exhibit, and it was clear from context that his point was that divine objects cannot be ‘desecrated’–they would, instead, exalt any material they came in contact with, no matter how base or vile they started out. At the time I saw it, I was still a believer, and I was fairly moved by the obvious power of the statement.*********
In Pakistan, it’s Muslims ganging up on Hindus, yes. But in India, it’s often the inverse. That’s the point. The two groups go at it like the Catholics and Protestants in North Ireland during the Troubles.
Useful article on the subject.
Kalyani – it wasn’t so much this story in particular as it was the background – the history of inter-religious hostilities on the subcontinent, which as I understand it were encouraged by the British as a handy way to short-circuit resistance to colonial rule. I realize that minority religions are not embraced in Pakistan but Modi’s India isn’t all that pluralist either.
Or…what Freemage just said, which I didn’t see until after typing the above.
“ the entire point of the infamous Mapplethorpe piece, Piss Christ”
That was Andres Serrano, just for the record.
An 8 year old hindu boy just wandered into a madrassa and decided to take a piss on the carpet? That sounds a little far fetched. I guess it’s possible that the boy is either (a) an obnoxious little shit trained to do the dirty on Muslims, in which case how has his family survived until now; or (b) he is developmentally challenged in which case the blasphemy charge and hounding is even more grotesque. I’m more inclined to think this will be another one of those cases that eventually turns out to be a wild and unfounded accusation (outright lie).
Given the tit for tat attacks against each other across the region it’s tempting to say a pox on both their houses, but there are very real innocent lives lost and destroyed with this shit.
Not to mention that both of their houses contain hundreds of nuclear weapons pointed at each other, and if they decided to usher in their armageddon, the resultant dust clouds from even a localised nuclear exchange would be enough to solve all of our global warming problems for decades. Technically the dust clouds would solve all of our problems, because agriculture would be impossible and it is highly unlikely that we could survive more than a few years.
Muslim mobs have already vandalized a Hindu temple nearby…with complete impunity. All that ecumenical soft soap about ‘respect for religion’ is bullshit. It’s always MY religion uber alles.
Sorry to lighten the tone, but in that case I definitely did more than a little blaspheming when I was a student.
But to bring the tone back down again, blasphemy laws are rightly seen as an indicator of despotitude. And yet the UK is blithely stumbling into some right now. Scotland is sprinting ahead of England and Wales but we’re struggling like demons to catch up. Few people are worried that this might be a bad idea. Most welcome it. We will not be happy until every independent thought has been purged.
Bugger, I’ve gone too far in the other direction now, someone lighten the mood a bit. But not too much.
Anna @6: Dammit, thanks for the correction. My brain should’ve had more doubt that I remembered correctly which controversial artist did what.
I added the correction.