Muslim Slavery In Pakistan

The Australian edition of Christian Today is reporting about a Pakistani Muslim who beat a Christian who refused to work for him as a slave:

A Muslim land owner in Pakistan this month subjected a 25-year-old Christian to burns and a series of humiliations, including falsely charging him with having sex with his own niece, because the Christian refused to work for him without pay.


Fayaz Masih is in jail with burns on his body after No. 115 Chitraan Wala village head Zafar Iqbal Ghuman and other villagers punished Masih for refusing to work as a slave in his fields, said the Rev. Yaqub Masih, a Pentecostal evangelist. The village is located in Nankana Sahib district, Punjab Province.

Sources said neither Fayaz Masih nor his family had taken any loans from Ghuman, and that they had no obligations to work off any debt for Ghuman as bonded laborers.

Yaqub Masih said the young man’s refusal to work in Ghuman’s fields infuriated the Muslim, who was accustomed to forcing Christians into slavery. He said Ghuman considered Masih’s refusal an act of disobedience by a “choohra,” the pejorative word for Christians in Pakistan.

Fortunately, the police were called in--unfortunately, they did nothing:

After Masih collapsed from the abuse, Yaqub Masih and Gill [a man from the same village] called local police. Police did not arrive until three hours later, at 3:30 p.m., they said, led by Deputy Superintendent of Police Shoiab Ahmed Kamboh and Inspector Muhammad Yaqub.

“They rebuked the Muslim villagers that they could have killed this Christian youth, and they told them to give him a bath at once and change his clothes, in order to reduce the evidence against them,” Gill said.

Family members of Masih said Kamboh and Inspector Yaqub arrested some of the leading figures within the mob, but soon thereafter they received a call to release every Muslim.

“Instead of taking the Muslim men into custody, they detained my brother, and he was taken to the police station,” Seema Bibi said.

Of course, we don't normally associate slavery with Pakistan--instead, we associate it with the Muslim slave trade in Sudan and Mauritania, a topic that came up when Farrakhan resurrected his claim of Jewish involvement in the slave trade. I Abolish, the American anti-slavery group noted in July:

 it’s been almost two decades since Farrakhan’s abrupt and intriguing near-silence on the Jews-as-slavers matter. The silence was forced upon him because he was caught out covering up, excusing, or denying that Arab/Muslims were (and still are) enslaving blacks in Sudan and Mauritania. Farrakhan’s job is to convince Blacks that Jews are their enemies and that Islam is the path to freedom. But when Jewish and Black writers in or allied with, the American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG) documented the Arab/Islamic slave trade -- not only in the New York Times, but also widely in the Black press and on Black TV news shows, Farrakhan’s agenda was jeopardized. A fight ensured. The Times reported that Farrakhan exploded at a press conference when asked about his silence regarding Blacks serving Islamic masters. Farrakhan challenged the press: “Where is the proof? If slavery exists, why don’t you go as a member of the press and you look inside Sudan, and if you find it, then you come back and tell the American people what you found?”  When twoBaltimore Sun reporters, one black and one white, did just that, Louis Farrakhan took his “Jewish slavers” story and dove under the bed. 

Unfortunately, the issue of continued slavery in Muslim countries is being covered up as well.

Technorati Tag: Muslim Slave Trade.