Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't

The usual stupid shit from Pakistan:
A court in Pakistan has sentenced a Muslim prayer leader and his son to life in jail for blasphemy.

The pair were found guilty in Punjab province of tearing down a poster of a gathering to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. They deny blasphemy.
Round up those Muslim prayer leaders for insulting Islam!
The sentence was handed down by an anti-terrorism court in the city of Dera Ghazi Khan in eastern Punjab province on Tuesday.
Yessir, where there's tearing there's terrorism.
The complainant, Phool Khan, alleged that the pair had ripped down and trampled a poster of a gathering to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. It had been posted on a pillar outside the grocery shop.
Other stories, should you care to look them up, mention religious verses appearing on the poster, which makes it immune to any and all depredations the hand of man can offer, I guess. Clever folks should, about now, be painting everything they think is worth preserving with the requisite verses.

8 comments:

mikey said...

What can you expect from a Phool?

Hamish Mack said...

It's the elder Phool you have to look out for.
Religious nuts, what would the world do without them? Progress?

Mandos said...

Not to be a party-pooper or anything, but the "Ph" is not pronounced "F"---it's an aspirated /p^h/, meaning you breathe through the letter p. It means "Flower" in Urdu (mother tongue).

The blasphemy laws are mostly about using the state to enforce vendettas, and the situation was created by the cynical General Zia, so no one is immune.

Substance McGravitas said...

So this? پھ

Substance McGravitas said...

Rats. That doesn't display well.

Anyway down here at pe:

http://people.w3.org/rishida/scripts/urdu/

tigris said...

Pronunciation schmonunciation. Anyhoo, there's no puh-hool like an old puh-hool.

WV: Snonsit, the snootiest part of Nantucket.

Mandos said...

Substance: Substantially correct, yes. "pay", the three dots, followed (on the left, it's a left-to-right script) by a "do-chashmi hay" (lit. two-lensed "hay"), which is usually used to mark aspirated consonants. Aspiration and retroflexion are probably the trickiest part of Urdu/Hindi pronunciation for English-speakers.

mikey said...

I fed my goats two lensed hay and it turned out they could see me through the wall. Freaked me out, truth to tell.

But goats are pretty tight-lipped, it turns out, and they never even posted anything on GoatBook...

W/V has gone around the bend. "gorefast". So many possibilities I'm just all locked up...