The unfortunate episode of May 9 did not leave the minds of the people of Pak­istan that an incident has hap­pened in Ichra Bazaar of La­hore in recent days, which has given a strong slap on the face of our soci­ety. All the details of this untoward incident are in the public domain- how some people started threatening a woman wear­ing an Arabic script printed dress, saying that it is blasphemy to wear a dress with Quranic verses. Peo­ple menaced a woman in a big city bazaar without knowing the facts. Rather, a lynching crowd gathered against her, threatening her life and demanding that the punish­ment for Quranic blasphemy be severed from the head.

May Allah bless those shopkeep­ers who not only gave shelter for a woman in the shop, but also tried to convince the mob that the Ar­abic script was printed on the clothes, which had nothing to do with the Quranic verses, howev­er, the woman was trembling with the fear of the raging crowd until ASP Shehrbano Naqvi arrived at the scene and rescued her from a lynching mob. The terrified wom­an in police custody categorical­ly denied the accusation of blas­phemy and said that she belongs to a religious family and she can­not even think of insulting Islam and Quran.

How strange that one Muslim in an Islamic country is becoming in­secure from another Muslim. This is a picture of Pakistan in the 21st century where religious fanati­cism........

© The Nation