Cardinal says Pakistan's president wants to revise blasphemy law

(December 3, 2010) Pakistan's president may not have the political strength needed to abolish the anti-blasphemy law that places Christians at risk, but he has promised to try to revise the law, said Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran. The cardinal who is president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, spent four days in Pakistan in late November and met President Asif Ali Zardari, who, he said, demonstrated great interest in the Holy See's position on religious freedom. President Zardari has formed a commission "to re-examine the blasphemy law with a view toward possibly eventually abrogating it," Cardinal Tauran told Vatican Radio after his return from Pakistan. He said he told the president and everyone else he met that Christians in Pakistan are under the impression that they are considered second-class citizens. The country's blasphemy laws make insulting the Quran, the sacred book of Islam, an offense punishable by life imprisonment, while being found guilty of insulting the Prophet Mohammed brings an automatic death sentence. The Catholic Church, other Christian groups and human rights observers repeatedly have complained that making an accusation is so easy and disproving it is so difficult that the blasphemy law is often abused as a way to harm a Christian with whom one has a complaint or grudge. In mid-November, Pope Benedict XVI added his voice to international calls for the release of a Catholic woman, Asia Bibi, who faces the death penalty in Pakistan after being convicted of blasphemy.