“Blessed is the one who takes no offense at me,” Jesus says in this Sunday’s gospel, fully aware that his witness, as well as that of the imprisoned John the Baptist, has aroused the hostility of religious elites. Troubling reports out of predominantly Muslim Pakistan suggest that the Christian minority increasingly finds itself arousing hostile religious prejudice.

Observers say Christians are subject to persecution in Pakistan, where their beliefs are said to make them "unclean." A recent death sentence for blasphemy leveled against a Christian woman is provoking worldwide criticism. Aasia Noreen had offered water to a group of women farm workers suffering from the heat in her village in Pakistan's Punjab province. She was rebuffed by the women who said that because she was a Christian her water was unclean. Noreen defended her faith and was subsequently arrested and charged with blasphemy.

Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law originally was drawn up by the British in the Indian Penal Code of 1860 and was aimed at keeping peace among the sometimes strident adherents of the subcontinent's diverse faith traditions.

Not only did Pakistan inherit the laws after independence and partition from India, but it added to them. In the 1980s General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's military dictatorship introduced a variety of loosely worded clauses, including a death sentence for those deemed to have “defiled the sacred name of the Prophet.”

Muslim fundamentalists defend the law and have threatened its critics. One politician who called for Noreen to be pardoned now faces a fatwa--an Islamic religious decree--for alleged apostasy. Another politician who is trying to have the blasphemy laws amended has been warned of reprisals. Adding to the global criticism, Pope Benedict XVI last week called for Noreen's freedom.

Source: An article by Omar Waraich for TIME