ISLAMABAD: Islamic leaders in Pakistan have come out in support of a Christian girl with learning difficulties who is being held in prison, in an unprecedented public denunciation of the blasphemy law by hardline mullahs.

The All Pakistan Ulema Council, an umbrella group of Muslim clerics and scholars, which includes representatives from fundamentalist groups, joined hands with the Pakistan Interfaith League, which includes Christians, Sikhs and other religions, to call for justice for the girl, Rimsha, who is accused of blasphemy. They demanded that those making false allegations be punished.

A family rides past the locked house of Rimsha Masih, a Pakistani Christian girl accused of blasphemy, on the outskirts of Islamabad. Credit:Reuters/Faisal Mahmood

The chairman of the Ulema Council, Tahir Ashrafi, warned that the ''law of the jungle'' was gripping Pakistan, with police routinely pressured by baying mobs to register blasphemy charges, as happened in the case of Rimsha, which has made headlines around the world.

Rimsha, 11, whose family says she has Down syndrome, was charged this month with desecrating the Koran. The case has shocked the country's Christian population. Rimsha's own community, who were living in a poor Christian-Muslim enclave in Islamabad, were driven out of their homes by a crowd.