A young man has been charged with desecrating the Quran under Pakistan’s controversial “blasphemy” laws after the Christian had an argument over rent with his Muslim landlord, his attorneys said.

Police charged the man after his landlord accused him of burning pages of the Quran in order to prepare tea.

Pakistan police this month tortured a young Christian woman into revealing the whereabouts of the legal team helping her family after an influential Muslim family kidnapped her and her sister, sources said.

Police also helped the Muslim family beat relatives of the Christian woman on court premises and attacked the offices of the organization trying to help her family, they said.

Pakistani Christians have expressed concerns about renewed kidnappings and abuse of women and girls by Muslims in a country still reeling from the recent assassination of a Christian government minister.

Among those targeted was Sehar Naz, a 24-year-old employee with Pakistan’s State Life Insurance Corporation in Punjab province, who was recovering of her injuries Monday, May 23, after she was allegedly kidnapped and raped by a Pakistan Army officer.

Hundreds of Muslims in Gujranwala on Saturday attacked homes of Christians, a school and a Presbyterian church building after learning that police had released two Christians accused of “blasphemy” – amid reports of another alleged desecration of the Quran.

The riots compelled a large number of Christian families to flee, as they feared the kind of large-scale violence that occurred in Gojra on Aug. 1, 2009, when at least seven Christians were burned alive by Muslim mobs after the spread of a rumor of blasphemy.

Christians in south Punjab Province are accusing senior district officials of supporting local Muslims who allegedly demolished 150 Christian graves and desecrated holy relics – and are now threatening Christians seeking legal redress.

Official records reportedly state that the portion of land was allotted as a Christian cemetery.

Gumen have shot and killed Pakistan’s Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian, who publicly challenged the country’s controversial blasphemy laws and demanded more rights for minority Christians in the mainly Islamic nation.

He was the only Christian in the cabinet.

Churches in Pakistan have expressed frustration over the government’s refusal to amend a controversial blasphemy law, as urged by the Pope and protesting civil rights activists.

“We are disappointed by the stand taken by the Prime Minister,” said Joseph Francis, director of CLAAS (Centre for Legal Aid Assistance & Settlement), which has defended dozens of Christians and Muslims charged under the law.

A court in Pakistan has sentenced a Muslim prayer leader and his son to life in jail for blasphemy.

Salman Taseer’s death provides a parable of why Pakistan, which promised so much, has slipped so far.

More than 50,000 people rallied in Pakistan’s southern city of Karachi on Sunday, police said, against the controversial reform of a blasphemy law that was behind the killing of a senior politician.

Local Pakistani Christians and the family of a Christian youth are facing potential death threats and the terrorization of “dire consequences” following the elopement and marriage of a Christian young man who has converted to Islam and his young Muslim bride.

A Christian lawyer and minority rights advocate has revealed that homes of local Christians were attacked, women were abused and household items vandalized by Muslim fanatics searching for the youth.

An evangelist is still recovering from burns after six young Muslim men beat him with clubs and belts and set him on fire last month in a village near this Punjab Province city.

Aamir Masih, a Christian elder of the same village, said that the young Muslim men mistakenly regarded verses in the pamphlet describing the resurrection of Jesus as derogatory to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam.

“This angered the Muslim men, and they ordered Augustine to leave the village at once and stop preaching the gospel in Village 96-NB immediately or face the consequences,” Masih said.

Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old mother-of-five, denies blasphemy and told investigators that she was being persecuted for her faith in a country where Christians face routine harassment and discrimination.

Christian groups and human rights campaigners condemned the verdict and called for the blasphemy laws to be repealed.

The vulnerability of Christian girls to sexual assault in Pakistani society emerged again last month as a Muslim landowner allegedly targeted a 16-year-old and a gang of madrassa (Islamic school) students allegedly abused a 12-year-old in Punjab Province.

The students at Jamia Islamia Madrassa had been harassing Christians in the villages around Gujar Khan, said the pastor of the church to which the girl’s family belongs, United Pentecostal Church.

A Muslim mob in Jhelum, Pakistan murdered the wife and four children of a Christian last month, but local authorities are too afraid of the local Muslim leader to file charges, according to area Muslim and Christian sources.

Jamshed Masih, a police officer who was transferred 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Gujrat to Jhelum, Punjab Province, said a mob led by Muslim religious leader Maulana Mahfooz Khan killed his family on June 21 after Khan called him to the local mosque and told him to leave the predominantly Muslim colony. Jhelum is 85 kilometers (53 miles) south of Islamabad.