by
Les May
THE
title of this piece
is that used by the ‘i’
newspaper to preface two extracts, one from The
Times
and the other from the Daily
Telegraph.
Both
relate to the case of Asia
Bibi
the Pakistani Christian woman who was held on death row for eight
years accused of blasphemy before finally being acquitted by the
Pakistan Supreme Court. The acquittal resulted in mobs taking to the
streets demanding that she be hanged. The rioting mobs were only
placated when the president of Pakistan Imran Khan said that her
acquittal would be ‘reviewed’. Since
then she has been in hiding and her defence lawyer has fled to the
Netherlands of
fear of his life.
A
report
in The Telegraph
quoted Jeremy Hunt
the Foreign Secretary as
saying:
‘So often, the persecution of Christians is a
telling early warning sign of the persecution of every minority. But
I am not convinced that our response to the threats facing this group
has always matched the scale of the problem’.
A
Times
editorial said
‘Asia Bibi’s case symbolises the fate of
persecuted Christians around the world. It is welcome that the
Foreign Secretary has clarified the Government’s stance whilst
acknowledging the UK’s failings with regard to safeguarding
Christian’s overseas.’
What is both surprising and
disappointing is that it has been left to a Tory cabinet minister and
two Tory supporting papers to take up the Asia Bibi case. The
normally very vocal so called ‘liberal left’ with its obsession
with identity politics has ignored her plight. I am also aware that
some time ago one of the Northern Voices editors contacted
Jeremy Corbyn’s office for a response to the Asia Bibi case.
A reply is still awaited.
As I have mentioned before I
have no axe to grind on this as I am an atheist. But I cannot help
noticing that all too often, because some Christians express views
about homosexuality and abortion that some people do not like,
Christians are seen only as persecutors of others and never as
victims of persecution.
So far as I am concerned
Christians are free to believe that they know what God thinks about
homosexuality or abortion and to tell the rest of us if they are
minded to do so. I am free to ignore them. It’s called tolerance
and stems from the belief that freedom of speech is having the right
to tell people what they do not want to hear.
Given that Asia Bibi is in fear
of her life, yet her plight is ignored by the so called ‘liberal
left’, puts into perspective the constant whingeing from assorted
self interest groups about trivial incidents which they claim are
‘offensive’. A stray hand on someone’s knee or calling someone
with full set of wedding tackle ‘he’ when they claim to be ‘she’,
doesn’t really compare with having mobs on the street determined to
hang you from the nearest lamp post.
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