If Britain won’t offer Asia Bibi asylum, Trump should

Asia Bibi was accused of blasphemy after refusing the demands of her co-workers to reject her Catholic faith and embrace Islam. A mob invaded her home and attacked her and her family. The police responded to this brutal, unprovoked assault as you would expect: they arrested Asia Bibi and charged her with blasphemy. The local police insisted that she had called the Qur’an a fake and insulted Muhammad. She had not. Her only ‘insult’ was being a Christian. Nonetheless, a local judge sentenced her to death by hanging and the Lahore High Court upheld the judgement.

For nine years, Bibi was kept in solitary confinement so her fellow inmates could not get their hands on her. Two politicians who defended her, meanwhile – Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti – were assassinated. Crowds hailed their murderers as heroes of the faith.

Last month, Pakistan’s Supreme Court finally acquitted Bibi. In a hearteningly firm judgement, it accused her co-workers of insulting Christianity, thus violating ‘the covenant made by Muhammad with Christians’, and cast doubt on the claims that she had insulted Islam.