By
Khaled Ahmed
December
19, 2020
Pakistan’s
most humiliating moment is reached every time someone is accused of blasphemy
and sentenced to death. Proof is not needed; the court is just too scared to
let the accused go, as happened in the case of Junaid Hafeez, a “visiting”
faculty member at the English department of Bahauddin Zakariya University in
Multan, who was sentenced to death by a court in Multan in 2019 after being
arrested in 2013. He was a Fulbright scholar with a Master’s from Jackson State
University. It is easy to convict people for blasphemy because the law says an
insult to the Prophet PBUH can take place even by innuendo.
Then, there
are the clerics who can scare any judge if they think he is getting soft
because of lack of evidence. One such “blasphemy” priest, Allama Khadim Hussain
Rizvi, died a natural death recently after getting many innocent people in
trouble over “rumours” of blasphemy. His fiery sermons caused police-guard
Mumtaz Qadri to pump 27 bullets into Governor of Punjab Salmaan Taseer in 2011
for supporting a Christian woman accused of blasphemy.
Amnesty
International in September appealed to Pakistani authorities to immediately and
unconditionally release Hafeez. “Junaid’s lengthy trial has gravely affected
his mental and physical health, endangered him and his family, and exemplifies
the misuse of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws,” Amnesty International’s regional
researcher, Rabia Mehmood, stated.
Junaid’s
father tried to find a lawyer who would tell the scared judge why his son
should be let off. He had to confess: “I found a lawyer willing to take the
case but, on his first day, he was harassed by some 200 lawyers.” He still
thought the judge would be fearless. “The prosecution, the witnesses and trial
could not prove any of the allegations,” said the lawyer.
Before
India’s “love jihad”, Pakistan found its way to getting rid of its Christians.
Blasphemy was pinned on them with the confidence that no judge would let them
off the hook, with pious crowds demanding death outside his court.
In August 2009,
after a week of simmering Muslim-Christian dispute over the desecration of the
Holy Quran in tehsil Gojra in Toba Tek Singh district in Punjab, violence broke
out. As usual, a “banned organisation”, Sipah-e-Sahaba, came from outside town,
took over and used acid and petrol bombs to destroy property and kill women and
children, while the local government and police stood aside. The federal
government took only “serious note”.
Christians
are the largest religious minority in Pakistan. The total number of Christians
in Pakistan was at least 2 million in 2008 or 1.1 per cent of the population.
An examination of birth records yields a total number of Christians at 2.8
million. More than 90 per cent of the country’s Christians reside in Punjab.
And 60 per cent live in villages, and in most cases are more indigenous to
their areas than Muslims.
Blasphemy
and desecration of the Quran are used against them, but the latter is used
against them collectively, followed by organised destruction of property. In
1997, the twin villages of Shantinagar-Tibba Colony, 12 km east of Khanewal,
Multan Division, were looted and burnt by 20,000 Muslim citizens and 500
policemen acting together after an incident of desecration of the Quran was
reported. The police first evacuated the Christian population of 15,000, then
helped the raiders use explosives to blow up their houses and property.
Sipah-e-Sahaba was blamed by the Christians for the violence.
In 2005,
the Christian community of Sangla Hill in Nankana district in Punjab experienced
a most hair-raising day of violence. After allegations of desecration of the
Quran, a mob of 3,000 led by a local politician and the police burnt down three
churches, a missionary-run school, two hostels and several houses belonging to
Christians. Lahore’s archbishop stated that the attackers had been brought
there by buses from outside.
The great
champion of the blasphemy law, Allama Khadim Husain Rizvi, would lead
“life-sacrificing” followers to Islamabad and block all roads going to the
capital city and condemn the government, harshly using the word Dalla (pimp)
for politicians. When coronaries finally took him in Lahore, there were more
than a million “devotees” at his funeral.
-----
Khaled
Ahmed is consulting editor, Newsweek Pakistan.
Original
Headline: Pakistan’s blasphemy law is used to target the Christian community
with impunity
Source: The Indian Express
URL: