On tiptoes

Saiful Malook

Radio 4's Sunday featured a fascinating interview with Saiful Malook, the lawyer for Asia Bibi, the Christian woman sentenced to death under Pakistan's Sharia-guided blasphemy laws.

He had to flee the country after Muslim fanatics threatened his life too, and had stringing criticism for Pakistan's Islamist-indulging PM Imran Khan and our own government for wriggling out of taking his client in. 

Knowing the story was coming on, I actively listened out to see if the BBC presenter, in typical Sunday fashion, would tiptoe around the religious angle with carefully chosen language, avoiding words like 'Muslim' and 'Islamic' and 'Sharia'. And she did. So much so that she even avoided the word 'Christian'.

This, then, is Emily Buchanan's introduction to the interview: 

Asia Bibi, the Pakistani woman sentenced to death for blasphemy, has written her autobiography. In it she says, "How could I ever imagine I would become a global symbol of the fight against religious extremism?" After her eventual acquittal she settled in Canada but not before two prominent Pakistani politicians lost their lives defending her. And now her lawyer, Saiful Malook, visiting Wales, has told me about the threats he's received from religious hardliners.

What matters

The Mail on Sunday claims an exclusive today: that it was Theresa May herself, acting in opposition to both her Home Secretary (Sajid Javid) and Foreign Secretary (Jeremy Hunt), who actually blocked the asylum application from Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi "despite (the) UK playing host to hijackers, extremists and rapists". They say, via government "sources" (including "a senior Government source"), that Mrs May "is afraid allowing Mrs Bibi into the UK could annoy British Muslims ". 

The MoS's story is being called "credible" by Sunder Katwala of British Future. and yet, it isn't being taken up by the BBC, as far as I can see. Strikingly, for example, Andrew Marr didn't raise it with Jeremy Hunt this morning. 

As many across the political spectrum are saying, blocking asylum for a genuine refugee in order to avoid ‘stoking tensions’ among British Muslims would be a truly disgraceful act. ("Pure evil", some are calling it). 

Again then, we face the question of what matters to media outlets - i.e. that some things matter more than others.

Will the BBC follow this up?

The Huff Post has a remarkable development in the Asia Bibi story which, if true, is truly scandalous and ought to be given the fullest attention by the BBC.

The British Pakistani Christian Association told the Huff Post that the UK government denied Asia's appeal for asylum because of its concerns about "unrest among certain sections of the community." The chairman of the BPCA said:

“I’ve been lead to believe that the UK government had concerns that her moving to the UK would cause security concerns and unrest among certain sections of the community and would also be a security threat to British embassies abroad which might be targeted by Islamist terrorists. 

“Asia and her family have now decided to take up one of the offers for asylum from a western country.”

Update: Andrew Neil has caught onto the story: