A tragedy averted or a conspiracy shot down

Islamabad
Yet another case of burning of pages/cuttings of Holy Quran was reported in Lahore on May 24 in which one Christian young man, Humayun alias Faisal, son of Allah Rakha, was allegedly caught by some people while he was taking the pages and cuttings/clippings of Holy Quran from a box hung purposely with a pole and was burning those.
The incident created a potentially explosive situation but the law enforcing agencies and a provincial minister
immediately rushed to the spot to cool down the frayed tempers and prevented protests and violence
spreading to other parts of the city.
Pakistan Interfaith League (PIL) Chairman Sajid Ishaq, while talking to ‘The News’ from Lahore, said that it was an unfortunate incident and the authenticity of the
facts being presented are yet to be ascertained and
verified against the allegations slapped on the young Christian man.
“But one also has to keep in mind the timing of this incident and the impact it could have created had the law enforcing agencies, the city administration and the intervention of the provincial government minister not been able to contain the ensuing protests and keep the things under a thick wrap,” the PIL chairman said.
“One can easily imagine the ferocity of the protestors as one senior officer of police received serious injuries, heavy teargas shelling was done and eventually the Rangers were called out to quell the unrest. And all this was happening less than 10 km away from Qaddafi
Stadium, where the second T-20 match between Pakistan and Zimbabwe was being played,” Sajid Ishaq pointed out.
“And one can easily imagine what would have been the reaction of the Zimbabwean cricket team, the first full ICC member international team to visit Pakistan since the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team almost six-and-a-half years ago in Lahore, had the trouble spread to other parts of the city.
They would have immediately packed their bags and left the country, leaving the prospects of any other international cricket team coming to Pakistan over the next decade almost out of question,” the PIL chairman stressed.
He added the circumstances; the day and the timing of the incident make the whole thing extremely intriguing, thus even more important for the investigators to probe the matter to the core.
“Had the violence spread all over the city, as it had in the past, on one side it would
have effectively compelled the Zimbabwean cricketers to pack and leave while on the other it would have cast another dark shadow on the conditions of Christian minority in Pakistan,” Sajid Ishaq said.