A 24-year-old Muslim man desecrated the Bible at the gates of Saint Anthony’s Catholic Church in Lahore on Friday in order to “avenge” extremist American preacher Terry Jones’ desecration of the Quran in Florida last month.
Police arrested the man, identified as Akhtar Hussain, a resident of the neighboring district of Kasur, and registered a case against him under Section 295-A of the Pakistan Penal Code.
Section 295-A states: “Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the 'religious feelings of any class of the citizens of Pakistan, by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representations insults the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, or with fine, or with both.”
According to police sources, Hussain had first tried to force entry into the church where a large number of Christians were attending a special mass, whereupon security guards at the gates stopped him and asked for identification.
The sources told The Christian Post that the guards denied Hussain entry into the church when he told them his name, and the church administration asked him why he wanted to go into the church. Hussain told them that he wanted to burn the Bible in the church just as Terry Jones and his fellow preacher Wayne Sapp had conducted a trial of the Quran in their church. The Muslim man then suddenly took out the Christian holy book he had hidden inside his clothes and proceeded to tear it apart.
The guards captured Hussain and called the police, who arrested him along with the evidence. Senior police official Umer Saeed said the man was in stable mental condition and had told police investigators he was “taking revenge” from the Christians for setting the Koran on fire. He said he had been “very tense” since he heard the news of the sacrilege and wanted to do something to get even.
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