Suspected Muslim militants shot and killed two Christian men who were due to appear in court on charges of blasphemy against Islam in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

Brothers Sajid Emmanuel, 30, and Rashid Emmanuel, 32, were assassinated by masked gun men Monday, July 19, inside a district court building in the city of Faisalabad.

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.

A Muslim vying with a Christian for a parcel of land here has accused the elderly man of “blaspheming” Islam’s prophet Muhammad, which is punishable by death or life imprisonment, according to the Christian Lawyers’ Foundation (CLF).

Pakistan’s so-called ‘blasphemy law” states that “whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) shall be punishable with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall be liable to fine.”

The head of a Muslim village last week ordered 250 Christian families to leave their homes in Khanewal district, Punjab Province, local residents said.

Abdul Sattar Khan, head of village No. 123/10R, Katcha Khoh, and other area Muslim residents ordered the expulsions after Christian residents objected too strenuously to sexual assaults by Muslims on Christian girls and women, said a locally elected Christian official, Emmanuel Masih.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, April 29 (Compass Direct News) – Local authorities on Monday (April 26) recovered a 14-year-old Christian girl from Pakistan Air Force (PAF) police who allegedly tortured her and her family for five days here as Christian “soft targets” over false theft allegations, sources said.

The Pervaiz family’s Roman Catholic parish priest, Samuel James, said that the theft accusation, illegal detainment and torture would not have happened to fellow Muslims.

Hundreds of people attended the funeral Wednesday, March 24, of a young Christian man who was allegedly burned by Muslim extremists and police officers for refusing to convert of Islam.

Arshed Masih, 38, was burned Friday, March 19, in front of a police station in Rawalpindi, Police Superintendent Moin Shah told BosNewsLife. His wife Martha Masih, 33, was raped by possibly three police officers in the police station, where the couple had been held for questioning, he added.

Citing “terrorism threats”, the government of Pakistan’s Punjab province banned protests Monday, March 22, against the “refusal” by police to detain those who burned a Christian man for not converting to Islam, while raping his wife.

Monday’s demonstrations were to be organized in the cities of Lahore and Rawilpindi, where police and religious leaders allegedly attacked the Christian couple Friday, March 19.

The government of Pakistan’s most populous province announced an investigation Sunday, March 21, into reports that a Christian man was burned and his wife raped by local police and Muslim religious leaders for refusing to convert to Islam.

Meanwhile, doctors at Punjab’s Holy Family Hospital in the city of Rawalpindi warned that their patient, 38-year-old Arshed Masih, would not be able to survive with 80 percent of his body burned.

Masih was attacked Friday, March 19, in front of a Rawalpindi police station near the capital Islamabad by at least three police officers and five Muslim religious leaders, according to several Christian and hospital sources.

Protestant Christians in Pakistan’s Punjab province were searching for a place of worship Wednesday, February 3, after angry Muslims apparently attacked their partly constructed church, injuring scores of worshippers.

Christians are a minority in Islamic Pakistan and rights investigators say there has been an increase in anti-Christian violence, with at least 130 Christians killed last year.

A daring protest and a high-profile funeral here on Monday (Jan. 25) for a 12-year-old Christian girl who died from torture and malnourishment has cast a rare spotlight on abuse of the Christian poor in Pakistan.

In an uncommon challenge in the predominantly Muslim nation, the Christian parents of Shazia Bashir Masih protested police unresponsiveness to the alleged violence against their daughter by Muslim attorney Chaudhary Muhammad Naeem and his family and his attempt to buy their silence after her death. The house servant died on Friday (Jan. 22) after working eight months in Naeem’s house.

A court hearing was underway Friday, January 29, in Pakistan against the main suspect in the murder of a 12-year-old Christian domestic servant, her family’s representatives said.

Shazia Masih was allegedly mentally and physically abused in the of Muslim lawyer Chaudhry Mohammad Naeem, in the city of Lahore, where she had worked for the last eight months to support her poor parents.

A young Christian shopkeeper was sentenced to a life term in prison and fined more than $1,000 last week following a dubious conviction of desecrating the Quran, according to Pakistan’s National Commission for Justice and Peace.

A conviction for blaspheming Muhammad (Section 295-C) is punishable by death under Pakistani’s notorious blasphemy laws. Widely condemned by the international community as easily invoked to settle personal enmities, Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have come under review in recent months, but to no avail.

Infuriated by an alleged anti-Islamic comment by a mentally ill man, more than a dozen Muslims attacked his Christian family here last week, beating his 20-year-old sister unconscious and breaking her leg.

The woman’s father, Aleem Mansoor, said his daughter Elishba Aleem went unconscious after being struck in the head with an iron rod in the Dec. 28 attack. Mansoor said a Muslim known as Mogal beat him and his daughter with the rod on the street in front of their apartment home after falsely accusing his 32-year old son, who suffers from schizophrenia, of blasphemy.

Two Christians in Gojra, Pakistan who allegedly fired warning shots as an Islamist mob approached that burned seven Christians to death on Aug. 1 told Compass they were tortured after police arrested them.

From his jail cell, Naveed Masih told Compass that he and his brother were taken to the Police Training Centre in Choong, where they were kept in illegal detention for 18 days and were tortured “in so many ways ruthlessly and in inhumane ways.”

A Pakistani Christian charged with abetting blasphemy against Islam was denied bail for his own safety last week after an Islamist lawyer allegedly threatened his life in a court hearing.

Insulting Islam is a dangerous activity in the conservative nation of 170 million, but with the spread of the Taliban, non-Muslims fear their very existence will make them a target to fundamentalists.

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