Sunday, October 15, 2006

Arabic teacher thrashes student for wearing cross
Principal consigns cross to dustbin
http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/s06100092.htm
 
By Sheraz Khurram Khan
Special Correspondent for ASSIST News Service in Pakistan

KASUR, PAKISTAN (ANS) -- A 15-year-old Christian female student had to confront wrath and thrashing by her Arabic teacher when the cross-wearing teen refused to shed her cross on Friday, October 13 in the district of Kasur, some 50 Km from eastern city of Lahore.

“The cross is our Christian religious symbol so I cannot remove it,” the BosNewsLife news service quoted Kiran Shahzadi as telling her Muslim teacher, Naisra Latif.
According to the report the girl was taken to the principal of the government secondary school who pulled the cross from her neck and consigned it to a dustbin.

The report went on to claim that the principal made Kiran stand under sun that made her faint.

Kiran was taken to a hospital where the doctor who examined her pronounced that she had been beaten, it added.

It further said that the police refused to file case against the accused despite insistence of some Christian leaders.

Without naming it said that the father of the girl, Yaqoob Masih was asked by a police official that “Pope has also blasphemed against our Holy Prophet.”

Muslim fury on the Pope’s comment has not subsided

Reacting to Pope Benedict XVI comment linking Islam with violence, some 38 renowned Muslim scholars have written an open letter to the pontiff, saying there would be no Church in the Muslim world if Islam had ever advocated violence.

According to the Pakistan Urdu Newspaper Daily Jang the letter which was posted on an Islamic magazine’s website said Jihad was not a holy war but a struggle in the way of God.