WORLD NEWS | Pakistan: Retired teacher arrested for offending fellow Prophet

Islamabad [Pakistan]July 11 (ANI): A retired Muslim teacher in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province was prosecuted by the FIR for posting material on social media that disrespected the companions of the Prophet Muhammad, Bitter Winter reports that .

A retired Muslim teacher has been arrested by police in Batagram, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, after a former teacher posted material on social media that disrespected fellow Prophet Muhammad.

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Bitter Winter is an online magazine about religious freedom and human rights in China, published by CESNUR, a center for the study of new religions headquartered in Turin, Italy.

The police acted quickly and the teacher was arrested on June 26. That’s despite the teacher’s insistence that he didn’t post anything disrespectful of Islam (his own religion), and that his profile may have been hacked, Bitter Winter reported.

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This is an example of the implementation of Section 298-A of the Pakistani Penal Code, which prohibits any form of disrespect towards the wife of the Prophet Muhammad.

Article 298-A of the Penal Code precedes the notorious Article 298-B and includes a series of discriminatory provisions targeting the Ahmadi religious minority.

Compared with blasphemy, Section 298-A provides relatively light penalties for those who disrespect Muhammad’s wife, relatives or companions, Bitter Winter reported.

However, lawyers warned that a judge could always turn a charge of disrespect into a charge of blasphemy at trial, with dire consequences for the accused.

The case also shows that Pakistan’s “cyber police” are constantly looking for evidence of profanity or similar crimes on social media. Sometimes, when activists can’t find any anti-Islamic posts, they fabricate them, Bitter Winter reported.

This news was written by Bitter Winter’s Massimo Introvigne. He was an Italian sociologist of religion. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for the Study of New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars studying new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of approximately 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of the sociology of religion. (Arnie)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a syndicated news feed, the latest staff may not have modified or edited the body of content)