A number of extremist clerics in Pakistan have begun a campaign to declare certain passages in the Bible as blasphemous because they depict Biblical characters as flawed.
The clerics insist these characters are considered to be Islamic prophets and thus find the sections blasphemous according to their religion.
If the court fails to find in their favour, the radicals intend to submit an application to see the Bible formally banned in Pakistan.
The campaign was announced earlier this week by clerics at a Lahore mosque and reported on by CNSNews.com, via the Karachi daily The News and the Urdu-language Roznama Islam.
The campaign leader, Abdul Rauf Farooqi, said that part of their motivation was to pay back “blasphemers” like Florida pastor Terry Jones who burnt a Koran in his church earlier this year. Farooqi said they would not follow in his footsteps by burning a Bible, but would like the passages in question banned instead.
Farooqi’s statement did not include a list of the passages, but instead maintained that various Biblical “insertions” were offensive to Muslims, who hold all prophets in esteem.
Farooqi does not represent Islam as a whole, but instead speaks for the ultra-militant Islamist organization JUI-S (Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Sami-ul-Haq group), and his move to ban parts of the Bible is the latest attempt by radicals to use Pakistan’s controversial “blasphemy” laws to stamp out minority religions.
Included in the blasphemy laws is provision (295-C) that entails life imprisonment or the death penalty for defiling the name of Muhammad, “by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly."
Farooqi’s JUI-S party is closely associated with jihadi organizations such as the Taliban.