PUC moot today

Islamabad: The Pakistan Ulema Council (PUC) will organise a national conference in Lahore today (Monday) to take stock of the situation arising out of publication of blasphemous caricatures by the French magazine ‘Charlie Hebdo’ and the terrorist attack on the magazine office which led to deaths of at least 12 persons.
The religious leaders and scholars from all faiths and schools of thought have been invited to attend the conference. PUC Chairman Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mahmood Ashrafi, while talking to ‘The News,’ said that the publication of these blasphemous caricatures was a condemnable attempt to hurt the attempts being made at global level to create interfaith understanding and harmony through peaceful dialogue.
Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi said that Islam is the only religion, which strictly binds its followers to believe in and respect other religions, their Prophets, their holy books and all their sacrosanct.
“However, for the last few years this trend has increased in the media and from other forums to deliberately hurt deep religious sentiments of Muslims by publishing such caricatures, making movies and publishing articles. Unfortunately all this is being done in the name of freedom of press and freedom of expression,” Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi, who is also a member of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), said.
He stressed that this is high time that the government of Europe, America and the rest of the world should start taking this particular matter as a serious issue because such acts of provocation can lead to serious consequences as we have witnessed recently as well as in the past.