He asked her three times: "Are you a Christian?"

by Rishi Sat Feb 16, 2013 11:17 pm

She was 16 years old, working as an operator in a tiny, public call office in Pakistan, when a man walked in and saw the silver cross dangling around her neck.
He asked her three times: "Are you a Christian?"

Julie Aftab answered, "Yes, sir," the first two times, and then got frustrated.

"Didn't you hear me?" she asked.

They argued, and the man abruptly left the little office, returning 30 or 40 minutes later with a turquoise bottle. Aftab tried to block the arc of battery acid, but it melted much of the right side of her face and left her with swirling, bone-deep burns on her chest and arms. She ran for the door, but a second man grabbed her hair, and they poured the acid down her throat, searing her esophagus.

Eldest of seven

Aftab was born in Faisalabad, Pakistan, the eldest of seven children in a Christian working-class family.

She dreamed of becoming a doctor, but dropped out of school at age 12 to work in a sewing factory after her father, a bus driver and the family's sole breadwinner, broke his back in an accident. After the sewing factory closed when Aftab was 16, she took a job as a telephone operator helping people place phone calls from the small office in the city's center.

It was June 15, 2002, two weeks into her new job, when the customer spotted her silver cross, a gift from her grandfather. She wore it despite knowing it branded her as Christian, a tiny minority in the Muslim-majority country.

You are living life in the gutter, the Muslim man told her.

She tried to ignore him, remembering what her mother had taught her since she was a child:
You are no one to insult someone's religion. If someone is insulting religion, they have to answer to God."
You are going to hell, the man told her. You are living in darkness.

"I am living in the light," Aftab replied.

So you think Islam is in darkness? the man demanded.

Aftab was frightened. She knew Christians had been accused of violating Pakistan's strict blasphemy laws in the past when others had twisted their words, to make it sound as though they had attacked Islam.

"No, you said that," she replied. "Not me."

But the man was enraged and returned with the battery acid and his friend. When she finally broke away from them, the acid searing her skin and throat, she ran down the street. As she screamed, teeth fell from her mouth and hit the ground.

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2012/07/christian-woman-acid-attacked-by-muslim-finds-new-life-in-houston.html

by Marathadi-Saamiyaar Sun Feb 17, 2013 12:15 am

Old news...but not much has changed.

Please ignore this ignorant people with muslim-sounding names.

Islam treats all women equally and respects all religions equally.

He asked her three times: "Are you a Christian?"

He asked her three times: "Are you a Christian?"

Re: He asked her three times: "Are you a Christian?"