An Anglican ‘Narrative’

Celebrated British columnist Michael Wharton (“Peter Simple”of the Daily Telegraph) once wrote to the effect that the Anglican Church seemed determined to drag itself down to a level so far beneath contempt that there was no expression to adequately describe it.

Readers may contemplate the following story — I mean “narrative” — and decide for themselves whether or not he was exaggerating.

In Sheikhupur, Pakistan in June, 2009, a poor Christian woman, Assiya Noreen, mother of five children, who were the only Christian family in her village, was harvesting berries in a field with a group of Moslem women. She was asked to fetch water for the others. She did so, but stopped to take a drink from an old metal cup she had found lying next to the well. It turned ouit this was a Muslim cup and her fellow workers attacked her for this. She was said to have declared “I believe in my religion and Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for the sins of mankind. What did your prophet Mohammed ever do to save mankind?”

She and her children were beaten by an enraged mob. The police who attended arrested her for blasphemy. She was held in prison for more than a year before being formally charged. And was sentenced to death. The Lahore High Court rejected an appeal. She is still in prison while further appeals are heard. Consider the ghastliness not only of her situation, but that of her husband and children, peniless, without support, resources or protection, in a fanatically hostile community.

The Governor of the Punjab, Salman Taseer, attempted to defend her and criticised the verdict and the blasphemy laws. As a result on 4 January, 2011, he was assassinated by his own bodyguard, Malikl Muumbaz Hussein Qadri, a man sworn to protect him. Thousands rallied in support of the murderer and oath-breaker (Qadri was hanged earlier this year). Five hundred clerics pronounced that it was forbidden to send condolences to Taseer’s family. Taseer’s 28-year-old-son was kidnapped, held prisoner, and only found five years later. Prison officials said that Noreen “wept inconsolably” on learning of Taseer’s assassination while repeatedly saying, “That man came here and he sacrificed his life for me.”