Recently, an innocent Christian man, his wife, and their unborn child were tortured and burned alive in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. There has been no public response from the U.S. Below is an excerpt of Bill Donohue’s letter of November 11 to President Obama.
One week ago today, an innocent Christian man, woman, and her unborn child were tortured and burned to death by a Muslim mob in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. They were charged, falsely, of desecrating the Koran, an act which violates the nation’s blasphemy laws. Yet so far there has been no public condemnation of this outrageous tragedy, either by you or the State Department. I implore you to do so immediately.
What happened cannot be understood without referencing Islam and Christianity, but it would be helpful, nonetheless, to assess this barbaric event untainted by religious considerations.
Consider, for the example the following explanation absent any reference to religion:
A woman cleans her father-in-law’s home, burning some waste materials. A man claims she was burning a few pages from a book. He spreads the word to neighborhood elites and soon the news is being spread by loudspeakers. The woman and her husband try to flee and manage to hide in a room housed in a commercial establishment.
Hundreds of angry men arrive on tractor trolleys and motor bikes looking for them. They rip open the building’s thatched roof, pulling them out. After parading them around naked in the street, the mob—which is now numbering into the thousands—then stone them. Next they are burned alive in a brick oven; she is wrapped in cotton to facilitate the burning.
This is an act of pure madness. Worse, it is hardly unknown in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
This savagery has been condemned by many Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders. It is precisely because there has been no U.S. response that Dr. Nazir S. Bhatti, president of the Pakistan Christian Congress, wrote to you on November 9. Here is what he said:
“It is surprising that neither the U.S. Administration under your honor nor U.S. State Department bothered to condemn this horrific crime of burning alive of [a] Christian couple in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which is receiving billions of dollars in aid from U.S. taxpayers.
“I would appeal your honor to put pressure on the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to end misuse of blasphemy laws against Christian, Ahamadia and other religious minorities and make any further U.S. aid to Pakistan conditional on that country’s human rights and repeal of blasphemy laws.”
I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Bhatti’s statement. I especially support his call to link foreign aid to a repeal of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. Any nation that allows humans to be burned alive—for whatever reason—does not deserve a dime from American taxpayers. It is even sicker when false accusations are made in the name of religion.
