Imran Khan stance against hardliners hailed

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Pakistan’s Imran Khan won praise for his stance against religious hardliners Thursday, as demonstrators blocked major roads to protest the Supreme Court’s overturning of a blasphemy conviction.

Khan has vowed to confront extremists who called for the assassination of the country’s Supreme Court justices, and for mutiny against the army’s top brass, after the acquittal of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman on death row for blasphemy. “We will protect people’s properties and lives, we will not allow any sabotage,” Khan said in a nationally televised address Wednesday.

Blasphemy is a massively infl ammatory charge in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where even unproven allegations of insulting Islam and its Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) can provoke death at the hands of vigilantes. Khan’s speech drew praise across social media, including from those formerly critical of the prime minister.

Prominent journalist Mosharraf Zaidi hailed a “remarkable speech” and a column in the English daily Dawn said Khan had taken “an unequivocal and strong line against religious bigotry and hatred that we have not seen taken in almost two decades”. (AFP)

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