Islam and blasphemy

Police were guarding a Christian neighbourhood in central Pakistan on Thursday, after hundreds of Muslim men rampaged through its streets setting fire to churches and ransacking homes over accusations of blasphemy a day earlier.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has decided to send a delegation led by its secretary-general, Brahim Taha, to engage the Commission of the European Union, expressing strong condemnation of the recent desecration of the Quran.

Greek officials Tuesday scrapped plans to criminalize blasphemy as a law-and-order debate intensified between the country's new conservative government and the left-wing opposition.
Justice Minister Costas Tsiaras said the proposal has been removed from draft legislation that's being debated in Parliament. It would have made blasphemy punishable by up to two years in prison.

Justice Minister Kosta Tsiaras announced on Tuesday he will withdraw a controversial provision that would re-establish blasphemy as a crime punishable by up to two years sin prison, citing reactions to the proposed legislation.

The minister has announced a series of amendments to the new penal code that was approved by Greece's Parliament in July this year.

A Christian woman acquitted after eight years on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy was released but her whereabouts in Islamabad on Thursday remained a closely guarded secret in the wake of demands by radical Islamists that she be publicly executed.

Pakistan's interior minister was recovering in hospital May 7 after being shot in a suspected assassination attempt possibly linked to blasphemy, with the attack seen as an ominous sign for security ahead of nationwide elections.

A 17-year-old Christian has been beaten to death by his fellow classmates at a school in Pakistan. Sharoon Masih, the lone Christian student in his year, had only attended the school in South Punjab for three days.

Archbishop Ieronymos Friday sent a letter to Education Minister Costas Gavroglou urging him to bring "aggressive anti-Christian sentiment" under control, after the head of an education agency was accused of throwing a religious icon in the trash.

Jakarta's Christian governor was jailed for two years May 9 after being found guilty of blasphemy, in a shock decision that has stoked concerns over rising religious intolerance in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation.

A mob beat a Pakistani student to death at his university campus on Thursday after he was accused of sharing blasphemous content on social media, university and police officials said.