Apparently criminalizing blasphemy against Mohammed, and prescribing a sentence of death, doesn’t make one a “country of particular concern”.

When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released the U.S. government’s Annual Report on International Religious Freedom this week, Pakistan was not listed among the so-called “Countries of Particular Concern”

“Secretary Clinton designated eight countries as CPCs: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan,” said the report. “The Secretary applied CPC sanctions to six of these: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, and Sudan.”

That despite the fact Clinton’s own agency notes Pakistan has criminalized converting from Islam to another religion. The penalty for conversion is, oh yes, death. The agency states in the report:

“The [Pakistani] constitution and other laws and policies restricted religious freedom and, in practice, the government enforces these restrictions,” says the State Department report.

“Freedom of speech was subject to ‘reasonable’ restrictions in the interest of the ‘glory of Islam,’ as stipulated in sections 295(a), (b), and (c) of the penal code,” says the report.

“The consequences of contravening the country’s blasphemy laws were death for defiling Islam or the prophets; life imprisonment for defiling, damaging, or desecrating the Qur’an; and 10 years imprisonment for insulting ‘another’s religious feelings,’” says the report.

Christians are the top target of these Pakistani laws. “Laws prohibiting blasphemy continued to be used against Christians,” says the State Department report.

And yet no designation of a “country of particular concern” for Pakistan. Gee, I wonder why.