ISLAMABAD: A cleric who handed over a young Christian girl to police on blasphemy charges after she burned papers containing Quranic verses said Friday what she did was a “conspiracy” to insult Muslims. Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti, the imam of the mosque in the Islamabad suburb of Mehrabad, insisted he had saved the girl, Rimsha, from mob violence by handing her to police but said the incident arose because Muslims had not stopped local Christians’ “anti-Islam activities” earlier. Rimsha was arrested and remanded in custody for a fortnight last Thursday after being accused of burning pages from a children’s religious instruction book, which were inscribed with verses from the Muslim holy text. The youngster reportedly has Down’s Syndrome and her treatment has prompted outrage from rights groups and concern from Western governments, but Chishti insisted she was fully aware of what she was doing. “The girl who burnt the Holy Quran has no mental illness and is a normal girl,” Chishti told AFP. “She did it knowingly, this is a conspiracy and not a mistake. She confessed what she did.” Chishti claimed the local Christian community had previously caused antagonism by playing music in services at their makeshift church during Muslim prayer time and said burning the pages was deliberate. “They committed this crime to insult us further. This happened because we did not stop their anti-Islam activities before,” he said. “Last Christmas, they played musical instruments and there was vulgarity in the streets during our prayers time. I warned them but they did not stop.” During his sermon at Friday prayers Chishti told worshippers it was “time for Muslims to wake up” and protect the Holy Quran. Mehrabad is home to around 500 Christian families but many fled after the page-burning, fearing a repeat of a 2009 incident in Gojra, in which young Muslim radicals burned Christian houses, killing seven, after a rumour that a page from the Holy Quran had been desecrated during a wedding.
A Christian girl who was accused of burning Islam's holy book in a case that focused international attention on Pakistan's harsh blasphemy laws is in Canada with her family after spending months in hiding, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said.
Rimsha Masih was arrested in August in Islamabad after a Muslim cleric accused her of burning the Qur'an. She was held in jail before getting bail, but the cleric was later accused of fabricating evidence and the case against the girl was dropped.
Kenney said he had been following the case and was prompted to act when a Pakistani contact asked him in January whether the family could come to Canada.
"I said absolutely, if they could get her out," Kenney told the Canadian Press on Sunday. "So a number of people did some very dangerous, delicate work to extricate her and her family from Pakistan, and we provided the necessary visas."
On Saturday the girl's lawyer said she was in Canada, but Canada's immigration service at first said privacy concerns prevented them saying whether she was in the country.
Kenney said he had instructed immigration officials to process the family's applications for permanent residency on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
It's rare for Kenney to comment on individual immigration cases, but he said family members gave their consent to have their story made public.
Kenney said he met the family in Toronto in April, a few weeks after they arrived.
The case received widespread attention in part because of the girl's young age and questions about her mental abilities. An official medical report at the time put her age at 14, although some of her supporters said she was as young as 11.
Even though the case against her was thrown out, people accused of blasphemy in Pakistan are often subject to vigilante justice. Mobs have been known to attack and kill people accused of blasphemy, and two prominent politicians who have discussed changes to the blasphemy laws have been killed.
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