Bring Asia Bibi to America

For John, BLUF:  We can't force reform on other nations, but we can grant refugee status to the truly in need.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Asia Bibi and the First Freedom

Here is the sub-headline:

Why hasn't she been granted asylum?

From The Washington Free Beacon, by Mr Matthew Continetti, 23 November 2018.

Here is the lede plus one:

Asia Bibi got into an argument with her co-workers and ended up in jail.  Bibi is a Pakistani Catholic and mother of five.  She cannot read. For years, she picked fruit in her rural village.  One day in June 2009, her peers refused to share a pitcher of water with her because she is a Christian.  She argued with them, muttering some caustic words about the founder of Islam.  They responded by accusing her of blasphemy:  a capital crime in Pakistan.  The next year she was sentenced to death row.

No longer.  In October the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted and released Asia Bibi after a long legal battle, during which Islamic radicals assassinated a Pakistani official for supporting her cause.  The response to her acquittal was unsurprising.  Global media and human rights organizations cheered, while Pakistani fundamentalists demonstrated and hung Asia Bibi in effigy.  The outrage spooked Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan into making it more difficult for her to leave the country.  Facing the risk of extrajudicial killing,  Bibi remains in hiding. Her lawyer Saiful Malook fled to Europe.  Protests greeted his arrival

And here is the fourth paragraph:

How lucky one is to be born in the United States.  The American tradition of religious freedom is strong, and it is neither to be underappreciated nor tossed off lightly. Religious dissenters founded several of the original colonies.  The first clauses of the Bill of Rights prohibit an established church as well as abridgments of the free exercise of religion.  George Washington's letter to the Touro synagogue in Newport reflects the American (and Biblical) ideal:  "Every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid."  Asia Bibi's story pricks the conscience because it is so outside the American understanding of public speech, of religious practice.

Other freedoms can be seen to flow from the recognition of the freedom of religion.  Were it that all nations recognized this freedom.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff