Giving a Cup of Water

Giving a Cup of Water

 Phyllis Zagano
Asia Bibi is still in jail…
In 2009, this wife of a brick maker and mother of five went berry picking to earn an extra 250 Pakistani rupees near her simple home in Punjab….
According to Blasphemy, a book co-written with French television journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet that tells Asia’s story, it started when she used a common cup to take water twice from a well in the berry field. Another woman shouted that Asia, a Christian, made the water haram, or unclean for Muslims.
All the other berry pickers were Muslim.
They say it was more than 100 degrees that day, so maybe the heat pushed the rage button on either side of the discussion. Perhaps Asia did not think of or did not know that detail of the laws of cleanliness. She was thirsty. She took two cups of water. And when confronted, she said to the accusers, “I think Jesus would see it differently from Muhammad.”…
The confrontation by the well got nasty. They called Asia a filthy Christian and Jesus a bastard…. Somehow, Asia escaped alive, but five days later, she went back to pick some berries and earn some rupees. A mob beat and dragged her to the law, which some months later found her guilty of blasphemy and sentenced her to death.
They say Asia is the only woman so sentenced in this century. She has been waiting in filthy prison cells for nearly four years now, first an hour away from her family, now another five hours away. Her appeal sits in some court or another.
Before they moved her a few months ago, Asia lived on food her husband brought. Now she takes the common prison meals, always fearing poison. There is a 5,000 euro bounty offered by a Muslim cleric to the one who kills her….
She is not the only person – male or female; Christian, Hindu or Muslim – stuck in some Pakistani prison suffering because of real or imagined charges of blasphemy. The sharp edge of the law within that supposedly secular state cuts anyone in its path.
Disrespect for another’s religious belief is a deeply serious affliction in any situation or society. Prejudices exist. Jobs and perquisites and preferential treatments can sway back and forth according to the beliefs of the powerful. That is the human condition. But four years’ inhumane imprisonment for a simple woman is more than enough.
I think Jesus and Muhammad would see it exactly the same way.