Source: leicestermercury.co.uk
Is it an offence to read the Holy Quran?
You would have thought not, but it is – in Pakistan…. that is if you are a member of my community, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
Because in Pakistan, increasingly in the grip of extremist and fundamentalist thinking, there is little room for enlightened thinking or free debate.
Instead, there is oppression – of women, of minorities like Shias, Christians, Hindus, Khojas and indeed of anyone who challenges the status quo.
It is in this climate that a 72-year-old British national has been thrown into prison – for reciting the Holy Quran.
Mr Masood Ahmad is a member of the Ahmadi Muslim Community, that is declared non-Muslim under Pakistan’s constitution and subject to widespread discrimination, violence and abuse. Mr Ahmad was arrested in Lahore, Punjab province, on December 15 last year after two people from a Muslim extremist group secretly filmed him reading a translation of a verse from the Holy Quran.
The accusers posed as patients at a clinic run by Mr Ahmad and after receiving medication stayed to ask religious questions. They questioned him about his faith and used mobile phones to secretly record him reading a verse from the Quran. Mr Ahmad was arrested when a mob, including local clerics, gathered… read more at leicestermercury.co.uk
Categories: Ahmadiyyat: True Islam, Asia, Islam, Pakistan
Dear Brothers/Sisters, if a non-Muslim in Pakistan tried to learn Islam by reading or even browsing Quran, he/she couls land in jail, right. How could Pakistani Muslim ever managed converting other religion to convert to Islam. Even holding a Quran is wrong & could be charged under blashfemy law.