Police and a banned Islamic extremist group in Lahore are searching for a young Christian accused of blasphemy — with the extremist group calling for his death — after he sought to correct misconceptions about Christianity in a Muslim book, it was reported in late October.
Sources close to Adnan Masih, 26, said he believes that if he turns himself in he will be killed by either the Islamic extremist Jamaat ud Dawa (JuD) or the Pakistani judicial system, which makes blasphemy against Islam’s prophet punishable by death. They said Masih denies having written anything against Islam or its prophet, when he scribbled in a Muslim book he found in a glass-works shop where his brother works.
Masih, who has a Master’s degree in English and trained as a pastor at a United Pentecostal seminary, was working in his brother’s shop when he became bored and began going through books in a desk drawer, where he noticed one entitled ‘I asked the Bible why Qur’ans were burnt’, sources said.
A source close to Masih said the evangelist and tutor noticed several false statements about the Bible and about Jesus, which he highlighted with a marker and corrected by answering with verses from the Bible. The next day Masih found a case had been registered against him for blasphemy.
According to the police, at the moment it’s not a matter of whether Masih is guilty or not, but that he must surrender to the police so that investigations can take place on the charges against him, which are ‘very serious’ under Pakistan law.
