The husband of Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian woman sentenced to death by hanging in 2010 for blasphemy, is urging the governments of the U.S., U.K., and Canada to grant her and his family asylum. Bibi is a Roman Catholic living under the repressive religious caste system in Pakistan. She was born and raised in the Sheikhupura district of Punjab, a place where Christians are second- or third-class citizens and relegated to lower-class jobs like cleaning and sweeping.
In 2009, Bibi was harvesting berries with a group of other women in a field, when she was ordered by a Muslim peer to fetch water from a well. She dutifully obeyed, but according to the strict religious norms of the region, committed an atrocious crime: She took a drink of water from a nearby cup, thereby contaminating the Muslim-reserved water with her Christian uncleanliness.
