Pakistani controversial blasphemy law must be reformed to avoid more bloodletting of Christian minorities in Pakistan, the country Minorities’ Minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, has told ASSIST News Service. “The blasphemy law has to be amended. We cannot condone contempt of any religion or religious personality, but this law is being abused by Muslim extremists to victimize minorities,” Bhatti, a Catholic, told ANS. Bhatti’s comments came the same day an anti-terrorism court in the central Pakistani town of Muzafarghar said that it had jailed two Muslim men for life on blasphemy charges. The men had allegedly pulled down a poster outside their grocery shop advertising an Islamic event in a nearby village which contained Quranic verses, trampling it underfoot. The sentencing to death of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother-of-five under the blasphemy law last November in eastern Pakistan has since sparked an international outcry amid moves to reform the law. Pope Benedict XVI has appealed for Asia Bibi’s life to be spared. In a speech on religious freedom on Monday, the pontiff urged that Pakistan's blasphemy law be repealed. “It is clear that it serves as a pretext for acts of injustice and violence against religious minorities,” he said. Bhatti agreed with the sentiments expressed by the pope. “We want to continue to safeguard the interests of the Christians and other minorities and we would like to let Asia Bibi out of jail,” Bhatti said. Recent mass demonstrations by religious parties in Pakistan will not deter the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP) from its bid to amend the blasphemy law and save the life of victims like Asia Bibi, Bhatti stated. No one in Pakistan has yet been executed under the blasphemy law. But it has exposed deep fault lines between liberals and increasingly powerful conservatives in the Muslim country. Opponents of the law say it is used to settle personal scores and disputes between sects and encourages Islamist extremism. Religious parties and their supporters have staged protests across the country since an amendment to the law contained in a bill tabled last November by former information minister and senior PPP member Sherry Rehman. Punjab provincial governor, Salman Taseer, an outspoken critic of the law, was shot dead by his bodyguard last Tuesday in Islamabad. Taseer had appealed to Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari to save Bibi from death by hanging. Since Taseer’s assassination - which was condemned by world leaders including the pope - conservative religious clerics in Pakistan have heaped praise on Taseer’s killer and stoked controversy over the reform of the law. On Sunday, 50,000-150,000 people attended a protest rally in the southern port city of Karachi, many of them waving placards in support of Malik Mumtaz Qadri, the police commando who has admitted killing Taseer. On the same day, Pakistani Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, ruled out amending the law after speaking by phone to the leader of one of the country's largest religious parties, Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI-F). Islam is the dominant religion in Pakistan, where 95 percent of people are Muslim, mainly Sunnis. Christians and Hindus make up approximately 5 percent of the population. Ten seats in parliament are reserved for Pakistan’s Hindu, Sikh, Christians and Ahmadiyya minorities.
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