Pakistan school shut, blasphemy alleged
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan --A nursing school was shut down and its Christian principal and four Christian students suspended after Muslim pupils accused unknown people of desecrating verses from the Quran, officials said Saturday.
The action by the management of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Science -- the main hospital in Islamabad -- came two weeks after Muslim nurses protested that verses from Islam's holy book regarding proper manners in drinking water had been erased from a wall.
It was not known which specific verses of the Quran, Islam's holy book, had allegedly been erased.
Altaf Pervez, an area police chief, confirmed the incident, but said he didn't know who was to blame. No spokesman for the hospital, which runs the school, which had a total of 178 students enrolled, was immediately available.
Principal Stella Hidayat said she was in shock after being suspended.
"I was on leave when this incident happened. I don't know why they punished me," she told The Associated Press.
A doctor at the hospital, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the suspensions have been imposed to "defuse tensions."
The doctor said dozens of female students from a notoriously Islamic fundamentalist seminary -- Jamia Hafsa, in Islamabad -- had demanded action against those they said had committed blasphemy.
Shahbaz Bhatti, who heads the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, which groups together Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and Parsis -- asked the government to reinstate Hidayat and the suspended students.
"The extremism has now reached our teaching hospitals," he said, adding the government should act against whoever was responsible for making the suspensions without evidence.
It was not known why the four Christian students were suspended. But Christian right groups complain that Pakistan's blasphemy laws are often misused to implicate members of minority communities.
Under Pakistani laws, insulting the Quran or Muhammad, Islam's prophet, can be punished with death but such punishments are not known to have been carried out in the conservative Muslim nation.
Christians and other minorities in the Islamic nation of 160 million people generally live together peacefully. However, some churches have been attacked following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in America and subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Most of the attacks have been blamed on pro-Taliban militants, angered by the government's close cooperation with the U.S. anti-terrorism campaign.
