Two Christian brothers in Pakistan were arrested on Tuesday and charged with blasphemy after being accused of desecrating pages of the Quran, sources said.
Tabish Shahid and Kalu Shahid, the 18-year-old sons of Shahid Masih of Kalay Wala Tehsil in Kasur district of Punjab province, were arrested on the complaint of Muslim Ghulam Mustafa after the two uneducated brothers were accused of tearing out pages from the Quran.
Desecration of the Koran is punishable by life imprisonment in predominantly Muslim Pakistan, but intent must be proven for a conviction.
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Mustafa claimed that the brothers desecrated pages of the Koran at a local village festival on Monday evening.
“The boys were making TikTok videos by throwing fake currency notes and scraps of paper during the annual Urs (anniversary) at the shrine of Baba Ronaq Shah when some locals noticed Quranic verses on the torn paper,” Mustafa said in the First Information Report (FIR) registered under Section 295-B of the blasphemy laws widely condemned in Pakistan.
Sajid Christopher of the Human Friends Organization said the brothers were illiterate and came from a poor family.
“Tabish and Kalu had gone to the shrine to watch the Urs celebrations and make TikTok videos,” Christopher told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “When they saw other people throwing money in the air in celebration, the boys thought they could have a little fun. Due to their illiteracy and ignorance, the two did not realize that they had accidentally torn out pages from a Quran booklet lying nearby.”
Family members of the young men handed them over to police after officers took their mother and a maternal uncle into custody, Christopher said.
“Their father, Shahid Masih, worked in a brick factory, but he had only recently started working as a bricklayer,” he said. “The boys had only started working in a local factory a few days before this incident.”
Christopher said the family approached his organization for legal assistance, which then hired Muslim lawyer Chaudhry Imtiaz to defend the brothers.
Christopher stressed the need to raise awareness of the danger of blasphemy accusations among the poor and illiterate, saying that many of the accused Christians lack basic education.
“While it is true that most blasphemy allegations arise from personal disputes and rivalries, there are also cases where Christians have got into trouble because of their illiteracy,” Christopher said. “Church and civil society organizations should also focus on this aspect to prevent people from getting involved in such cases.”
Mustafa claimed in his FIR that the incident had hurt the religious sentiments of Muslims.
Local sources, who wished to remain anonymous, told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News that some Christian families in the village had fled their homes for fear of violence.
“After the boys turned themselves in to police, the situation has now returned to normal, but there were fears that Islamist groups might attack their homes,” a source said.
In Jaranwala Tehsil of Faisalabad district of Punjab province, a Muslim mob ransacked 25 churches and more than 80 houses of Christians on August 16, 2023, after two brothers were accused of desecrating the Quran and writing blasphemous content. The brothers were released from the case after eight months after it was found that they had been falsely accused by another Christian.
According to the Center for Social Justice, nearly 3,000 people have been accused of blasphemy since 1987. The actual extent of abuse of these laws is three to four times higher, according to a report.
It states that hundreds of accused were detained in Pakistan last year, including 552 in prisons in Punjab province alone. As of June 2024, at least 350 people were behind bars, according to the report, and 103 new people were charged with blasphemy between January and June 2024.
Pakistan ranked seventh on Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List of the most difficult places for Christians, the same as last year.
This article was originally published by Christian Daily International–Morning Star News.
Christian Daily International provides biblical, factual and personal news, stories and perspectives from every region with a focus on religious freedom, holistic mission and other issues relevant to the global church today.
Morning Star News is the only independent news service devoted exclusively to Christian persecution. The nonprofit’s mission is to provide complete, reliable and unbiased news to empower people in the free world to help persecuted Christians and to encourage persecuted Christians by letting them know they are not alone in their suffering.
