Shugufta Emmanuel, left, and Shafqat Emmanuel
LAHORE, Pakistan – A Christian couple in Punjab Province incapable of writing proper Urdu was sentenced to death today (April 4) for allegedly sending blasphemous text messages, bringing the number of Christians on death row in Pakistan to four.
In a country reeling from increasing religious intolerance, the death knell for Shafqat Emmanuel and Shugufta Emmanuel sounded eight days after a court in Lahore sentenced another Christian, Sawan Masih, to death for allegedly insulting Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, during a drunken conversation with a Muslim friend. That made Masih the second Christian in Pakistan now on death row after a judge sentenced Christian mother Asia Bibi to death for alleged blasphemy in November 2010.
A court in Toba Tek Singh heard the case against Shafqat Emmanuel, 43, and his wife, a cleaner at a local missionary school and mother to four young children. They were accused of sending blasphemous text messages on June 18, 2013, to complainants Muhammad Hussain and Gojra Tehsil Bar Association President Anwar Mansoor Goraya from a number allegedly registered in Shagufta’s name.
Read more at http://morningstarnews.org/2014/04/christian-couple-in-pakistan-sentenced-to-death-for-blasphemy/
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Unless Christians stand up and make a stink about this, things like this will keep happening. I know Christians are to expect persecution, but that does not mean that we should just sit idly by like dummies and let it happen. Nor should we waste it as a teaching moment to expose those who are doing the persecuting. The world needs to have a mirror shoved in their face so they can see the terrible things that they are doing and allowing to happen to Christians. It is ludicrous to follow people like Rick Warren, who push the blending of Christianity and Islam (Chrislam). It is blasphemous. Islam teaches that Christ was a Muslim prophet, and that he did not die on the cross. Blasphemy!!! They say the man on the cross was Judas or a look-alike. The Bible warns of false prophets. Warren falls into this category. And to those who swallow the line that all three major Abrahamic religions are the same, I have a Bible verse for you….
And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie. 2 Thessolonians 2:11