{"id":73489,"date":"2012-08-21T20:05:47","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T04:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/?p=17941"},"modified":"2012-08-21T20:05:47","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T04:05:47","slug":"rimsha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/2012\/08\/21\/rimsha\/","title":{"rendered":"Rimsha"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/files\/2012\/08\/rimsha.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-17942\" title=\"rimsha\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/files\/2012\/08\/rimsha.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"590\" height=\"306\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Over the past few weeks <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pussy_Riot#Arrest_and_prosecution\">Pussy Riot<\/a> has been quite in the news. But there&#8217;s been one reaction which surprised me: <strong>I actually appreciate that Russia is not quite as illiberal as Westerners may sometimes portray it.<\/strong> After all, there was a trial, and to my knowledge the members of Pussy Riot were not assaulted or physically attacked. Imagine that a feminist punk band had tried to pull off what Pussy Riot did in the Muslim world (commit an act performance protest in a house of worship). There&#8217;s a good chance they&#8217;d be dead before the authorities could even get a hold of them.<\/p>\n<p>With that in mind, I want to observe another instance of the mass insanity and barbarism which seems to be taking hold in Pakistan. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heraldsun.com.au\/ipad\/downs-syndrome-girl-accused-of-blasphemy\/story-fnbzs1v0-1226453997101\">Down Syndrome girl Rimsha accused of blasphemy in Pakistan<\/a>:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Police arrested Rimsha, who is recognised by a single name, on Thursday after she was reported holding in public burnt pages which had Islamic text and Koranic verses on them, a police official said.<\/p>\n<p>A conviction for blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan.<\/p>\n<p>The official said that the girl, who he described as being &#8230;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/GeneExpressionBlog\/~4\/38W8mPj3TW0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past few weeks Pussy Riot has been quite in the news. But there&#8217;s been one reaction which surprised me: I actually appreciate that Russia is not quite as illiberal as Westerners may sometimes portray it. After all, there was a trial, an&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,2110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islam","category-rimsha"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73489"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73517,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73489\/revisions\/73517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}