PAKISTAN – a world leader in religious lunacy – is back in the headlines, this time over the treatment of a 10-year-old Christian schoolgirl who misspelled a word pertaining to a poem in praise of the “prophet” Mohammed.

The Urdu word, according to this report, was “naat” (hymn), but Faryal Bhatti, an eighth grade student at Sir Syed Girls’ High School, wrote it as as “laanat” (curse).



It is the innocent mistake of a child. Many Muslim students in the madrassas incorrectly pronounce the Arabic words, changing their meaning. You cannot punish a child for an honest mistake – the girl was only 10 years old, she will carry this trauma with her. Faryal Bhatti has been subjected to all of this only because she is Christian, I protest against the decision to expel the young child and to transfer the mother.

All hell then broke loose. On spotting the error, Bhatti’s Urdu teacher Fareeda Bibi, scolded the child and beat her.Matters escalated when the school’s administration and religious leaders decided that the error was “serious” enough to fall within the realm of blasphemy.The next day, male students at the school and some religious leaders organised a rally and demanded that Bhatti be expelled and charged with blasphemy.It was reported later that a mob chanted slogans against Christians, and in last Friday’s sermons religious leaders denounced the episode as “a conspiracy against Islam”, which ought to be crushed.To appease the religious nutjobs, the school administration expelled Bhatti – andÂ her mother was stripped of her job at a local hospital, and transferred to another.One basketcase – Maulana Alla Dita Khateeb of Gol Masjid – praised the decision to expel the girl. Asked whether the incident fell within the realm of blasphemy, Khateeb said though he was unclear about the intentions of the girl, the word she had used was “sacrilegious”.But another more sensible pair of clerics – Maulana Mehfooz Ali Khan and Hussain Ahmed Malik opined:

The bishop of Islamabad-Rawalpindi, Anthony Rufin, told AsiaNews:

I condemn the incident. Now, even Christian students are victimized and accused of blasphemy. Society is becoming so intolerant that a tiny error gets major attention. The ulema have decided on the punishment of a child who does not even know what she did wrong. They should have explained the mistake to her, if it really was a terrible mistake, in this way gaining her confidence and making a service to religious dialogue. What happened is exactly the opposite.

Hat tip: BarrieJohn