Here’s what happened to another miscreant who ‘defiled’ the Koran (actually he didn’t so much defile it as criticize it, but in the eyes of least some Pakistani courts that is, apparently, the same thing):
“The Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC), on Monday handed down a blasphemous writer a life term as well as other sentences, having found him guilty of the offence of defiling a copy of the Holy Quran, outraging religious feelings and propagating religious hatred among society. The ATC judge, Syed Saghir Hussain Zaidi sentenced Younus Sheikh to life imprisonment under section 295-B of the PPC, awarded 10 years in prison under section 295-A with a fine of Rs50,000, ordering that, in default, he shall have to suffer a further six-month term. The court also sentenced him to five years in prison under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) with a fine of Rs50,000. Sheikh was arrested by police in January 2005 for writing a book against the Islamic laws deviating from the teaching of Quran and Sunnah. The accused had negated the punishment of Rajam (Stoning to death in case of adultery) in his book and wrote contemptuous remarks against Imams of Fiqah.”
The horror of the sentence speaks for itself, but it’s interesting to see how familiar so much of the language of the laws Younus Sheikh was alleged to have broken now sound in a West (particularly the EU) now seemingly set on criminalizing speech that gives “offense”, an obnoxious trend made all the more so by the fact that such laws are often nothing more than an effort to revive old prohibitions against blasphemy. Hat-tip: The Pub Philosopher