{"id":2424,"date":"2011-01-05T23:38:44","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T23:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2011\/01\/assassination-threatens-challe.php"},"modified":"2011-01-05T23:38:44","modified_gmt":"2011-01-05T23:38:44","slug":"assassination-threatens-challe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/01\/assassination-threatens-challe","title":{"rendered":"Assassination Threatens Challenges to Blasphemy Law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BANGALORE, India &#8212; Church officials in Pakistan say the assassination of Salman Taseer, an outspoken critic of Pakistan&#8217;s blasphemy law, is a &#8220;setback&#8221; for the campaign to overturn the law that makes illegal to speak against Islam.<br \/>\n&#8220;This assassination has made it now extremely difficult for us to campaign against the blasphemy law,&#8221; Victor Azariah, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in Pakistan (NCCP), told RNS from his office at Lahore on Wednesday (Jan. 5). &#8220;Everyone here is scared.&#8221;<br \/>\nTaseer, 64, was governor of Punjab province before he was shot dead on Tuesday by one of his security guards in the provincial capital of Lahore.<br \/>\nThe alleged assailant, Malik Mumtaz Husain Qadri, immediately surrendered and told the police he carried out the murder to avenge the &#8220;insult&#8221; to the blasphemy law by Taseer, who had called it a &#8220;black law.&#8221;<br \/>\nTaseer had drawn the ire of Islamic fundamentalists after he initiated an unsuccessful clemency bid for Aasia Bibi, a 45-year-old Christian mother who was sentenced to death on questionable blasphemy charges in early November.<br \/>\nIslamic scholars issued an apostasy decree against the governor, who had met Bibi in jail to listen to her story and lobbied for her to be granted clemency.<br \/>\n&#8220;When such a high government official is killed for speaking out (against the blasphemy law), what can the ordinary people do?&#8221; asked Azariah.<br \/>\nThe assassination, he said, is &#8220;a setback to our demand for abolishing or amending the blasphemy law.&#8221;<br \/>\nArchbishop Lawrence Saldana, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Pakistan, also acknowledged the assassination would have &#8220;a negative impact&#8221; on civil and church activists campaigning against the blasphemy law.<br \/>\n&#8220;This (assassination) will only add to the fear that is already there,&#8221; said Saldana, who heads the Catholic Church in the overwhelmingly Muslim country.<br \/>\nRadical Muslim groups, meanwhile, publicly hailed the assassination of the outspoken governor who had tweeted a week ago that he was under &#8220;huge pressure to cow down &#8230; on blasphemy. Refused. Even if I&#8217;m the last man standing.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;We pay rich tributes and salute the bravery, valor and faith of Mumtaz Qadri,&#8221; said a statement by a group of fundamentalist clerics.<br \/>\n<strong> &#8212; Anto Akkara<\/strong>, <em>Religion News Service<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BANGALORE, India &#8212; Church officials in Pakistan say the assassination of Salman Taseer, an outspoken critic of Pakistan&#8217;s blasphemy law, is a &#8220;setback&#8221; for the campaign to overturn the law that makes illegal to speak against Islam. &#8220;This assassination has made it now extremely difficult for us to campaign against the blasphemy law,&#8221; Victor Azariah,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":264,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-rns"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Assassination Threatens Challenges to Blasphemy Law<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/01\/assassination-threatens-challe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Assassination Threatens Challenges to Blasphemy Law\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"BANGALORE, India &#8212; Church officials in Pakistan say the assassination of Salman Taseer, an outspoken critic of Pakistan&#8217;s blasphemy law, is a &#8220;setback&#8221; for the campaign to overturn the law that makes illegal to speak against Islam. &#8220;This assassination has made it now extremely difficult for us to campaign against the blasphemy law,&#8221; Victor Azariah,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/01\/assassination-threatens-challe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-01-05T23:38:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"editor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Assassination Threatens Challenges to Blasphemy Law","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/01\/assassination-threatens-challe","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Assassination Threatens Challenges to Blasphemy Law","og_description":"BANGALORE, India &#8212; Church officials in Pakistan say the assassination of Salman Taseer, an outspoken critic of Pakistan&#8217;s blasphemy law, is a &#8220;setback&#8221; for the campaign to overturn the law that makes illegal to speak against Islam. &#8220;This assassination has made it now extremely difficult for us to campaign against the blasphemy law,&#8221; Victor Azariah,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/01\/assassination-threatens-challe","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-01-05T23:38:44+00:00","author":"editor","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/01\/assassination-threatens-challe","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/01\/assassination-threatens-challe","name":"Assassination Threatens Challenges to Blasphemy Law","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-01-05T23:38:44+00:00","dateModified":"2011-01-05T23:38:44+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/58d12601cbe230a61e6f2ea91d341249"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/01\/assassination-threatens-challe#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/01\/assassination-threatens-challe"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/01\/assassination-threatens-challe#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Assassination Threatens Challenges to Blasphemy Law"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/58d12601cbe230a61e6f2ea91d341249","name":"editor","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dfc\/dfcc0838a84dd70003db24678b13c234x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dfc\/dfcc0838a84dd70003db24678b13c234x96.jpg","caption":"editor"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/editor"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/264"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}