A Pakistani police officer was praised for protecting a woman this weekend who was threatened by nearly 200 people, who accused her of blasphemy because she wore clothing with Arabic writing on it.
The woman, whose name has not been released for security reasons, was surrounded on Sunday in a restaurant in Lahore (east) by an aggressive crowd, wrongly convinced that the calligraphy on her outfit was taken from the Koran.
The issue of blasphemy is incendiary in this conservative, predominantly Muslim country, where even unproven allegations of offending Islam can lead to assassinations and lynchings.
“People were very tense and chanting slogans.
They said that people who commit blasphemy must be punished
,” police officer Syeda Shehrbano Naqvi told AFP.
Confusion
A video shared on social media shows the woman sitting in the corner of a room, hiding her head in her hands.
“The only punishment for blasphemy is beheading
,” the crowd can be heard chanting a little later.
“There was confusion and no one would listen to us.
We feared that if the dialogue did not start, this woman's life would be in danger
,” Naqvi added.
She then addressed the crowd, pleading to let the police determine whether the blasphemy law had been violated.
Then, she and her colleagues formed a chain to escort the woman to a vehicle.
Police later determined that the inscriptions were in no way blasphemous.
It was actually the word
“beautiful”
in Arabic that was written.
The policewoman's name has since been recommended by the Punjab Police for a medal.
On Monday, Maryam Nawaz Sharif, the first woman to lead a Pakistani province, paid tribute to him for having
“saved the life of a woman”
by taking office as head of the government of Punjab, of which Lahore is the capital.
Police have not made any arrests in this case.
And the victim apologized in a video for unintentionally offending people.