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Pakistan's blasphemy laws have left even judges in fear of their lives

Ahmad

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Oct 29, 2009
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So he's going to swing – perhaps. On Saturday a Pakistani judge sentenced Mumtaz Qadri, the police bodyguard who assassinated the Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer, to death by hanging. The young policeman smiled and thanked God. "My dream has come true," he reportedly said.

It was a predictably theatrical turn from Qadri, a former nobody who murdered Taseer in cowardly fashion – shooting the governor 27 times in the back – and who has since revelled in the notoriety of his blood-stained celebrity. Equally predictable, alas, was the reaction on the streets outside.

Close to the courtroom in Rawalpindi, angry young men attacked a monument to the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, defacing her image on the spot where she died in a suicide bombing in 2007. Down in Lahore, turbaned men with long sticks surged through the ancient Anarkali bazaar, thrashing traders who refused to shutter their shops in sympathy for Qadri.

Meanwhile the clerics engineering the protests – old men with soft palms and tinder-dry beards – issued po-faced statements decrying the sentence. Qadri was a good Muslim, they insisted, and Taseer got what he deserved. The governor had offended them by advocating reforms to Pakistan's antiquated blasphemy laws. In particularly they hated him for defending Aasia Bibi, a Christian mother-of-five sentenced to death under those laws last November. He deserved to die, they said.Taseer's wife and children, in contrast, were silent. They stayed at home, busy worrying about their son and sibling, Shahbaz. The 27-year-old was kidnapped in August as he purred through Lahore in a sports Mercedes – his father's old car, in fact. Word has it he is being held in the tribal badlands of Waziristan; whether his captors are religious extremists, common criminals, or both, remains unclear.


The family is also reeling from character assaults. When Taseer was still alive, conservatives circulated photos of his children, lifted from their Facebook pages, showing them engaged in objectionable activity, such as dating and swimming in a swimming pool. After Taseer died, Qadri's lawyers aired allegations about his sex life, drinking habits and apparent taste for pork – proof, they said, of a licentiousness that justified his cold-blooded murder.

The distasteful spectacle is partly a product of Pakistan's social gulf. The Taseers inhabit the gilded bubble of a tiny elite whose westernised lives play out in Hello!-style photospreads of society magazines. In fact the Taseers own one of the most popular magazines. But it also goes to the heart of a bigger ideological crisis.

In theory, Pakistan is a country that welcomes all creeds and castes. But in practice it is proving to be anything but. Ask Faryal Bhatti, a teenage girl recently expelled from school for the crime of bad spelling.

A week ago last Thursday, the 13-year-old Christian girl was sitting an Urdu exam which involved a poem about the prophet Muhammad when she dropped a dot on the Urdu word naat (a devotional hymn to the prophet), accidentally turning it into lanaat, or damnation. Spotting the error, her teacher scolded her, beat her and reported the matter to the principal. The news soon flamed through her community in Havelian, 30 miles north of Islamabad.



Mullahs raged against Bhatti in their sermons; a school inquiry was hastily convened to examine the matter. Bhatti was expelled; her mother, a government nurse, was banished to another town, and the family has since fled Havelian in fear of their lives. All over a missing dot.


What accounts for such madness? In some parts Taseer's death has inspired a McCarthyite atmosphere in which nobody wants to seen to be soft on blasphemy. But there is also a more profound reason. Devotion to the prophet Muhammad is central to the faith of the Barelvi Sunnis, who make up the majority of Pakistani Muslims. Even a whiff of insult to the prophet can whip up feverish anger.

The core problem, in fact, is that the blasphemy furore exposes the fragility of the Pakistani state – ideological, legal and security-wise. The mixing of religion and politics has long troubled Pakistan, but over the past 30 years that dangerous cocktail has been spiked by the army's policy of nurturing extremists – hence men like Qadri who believe they have a right to kill in the name of God.

Meanwhile President Asif Ali Zardari's government has shown zero leadership when it comes to reforming the blasphemy law – in fact, cowardly ministers have run a mile from any suggestion of change. And those who do dare to stand up for progress – or just the rule of law – live in fear of the next Qadri-style hit.

In truth, Taseer's baby-faced killer is unlikely to be hanged any time soon. A lengthy appeals process is just starting, and the Zardari government has imposed an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment. But the judge who sentenced him, Pervez Ali Shah, faces perhaps shorter odds.

Judges who rule the "wrong" way on blasphemy face immense dangers in Pakistan. In 1997 extremists burst into the chambers of a high court judge who acquitted an accused blasphemer three years earlier, and shot him dead. Justice Shah will be fearing a repeat.

Reporters at Qadri's hearing on Saturday noted that the judge slipped from the courtroom via the back door. He knows he is a marked man. Now only time will tell if the discredited Pakistani state can stand up for at least one good man.

Pakistan's blasphemy laws have left even judges in fear of their lives | Declan Walsh | Comment is free | The Guardian
 
Its there country , their law. Why shall we poke our nose??? We have already enough problem to solve...


But as a human : I think these kind of draconian law must be ...
 
With respect Ahmad, like any country, Pakistan has a right to decide the laws that will govern its land and if thats supporting the blasphemy law so be it. We live in a democracy dont we?

Dear Kaif, but here is the problem, these guys dont respect and accept democracy, if they do, then there isnt any problem left.
 
We live in a democracy dont we?

What you are pointing out is a fundamental flaw... tyranny of the majority. A society that is truly free must never let the majority injure, suppress, abuse, the minority.

Let's say a nation is ethnically 51% white, 49% black. A vote is sent out - "It is the law of the land that blacks must kneel before whites with heads bowed. Not doing so will result in summary execution." The vote passes, as whites hold the majority.

"It's their land, their country, their laws."

Sorry, that doesn't cut it.
 
What you are pointing out is a fundamental flaw... tyranny of the majority. A society that is truly free must never let the majority injure, suppress, abuse, the minority.

Let's say a nation is ethnically 51% white, 49% black. A vote is sent out - "It is the law of the land that blacks must kneel before whites with heads bowed. Not doing so will result in summary execution." The vote passes, as whites hold the majority.

"It's their land, their country, their laws."

Sorry, that doesn't cut it.

I agree we need good honest leaders who can sort out this persecution of minorities by a minority of pakistani muslims under the guise of religion this can not be allowed. Chogy american govt has a part to play and should pressurise the likes of zardari who has large property holdings in america to play their part. American govt all too ready to interfere in other matters. This is the type of things they should or could be helpful in.
 
What you are pointing out is a fundamental flaw... tyranny of the majority. A society that is truly free must never let the majority injure, suppress, abuse, the minority.

Let's say a nation is ethnically 51% white, 49% black. A vote is sent out - "It is the law of the land that blacks must kneel before whites with heads bowed. Not doing so will result in summary execution." The vote passes, as whites hold the majority.

"It's their land, their country, their laws."

Sorry, that doesn't cut it.

Well, the fundamental flaw is the biggest and most glaring flaw of democracy, but hey, it is the best we have!

The society should be tolerant and keep a cool head.

As somebody said, Zia ruined the society, Musharraf ruined the nation.
 
With respect Ahmad, like any country, Pakistan has a right to decide the laws that will govern its land and if thats supporting the blasphemy law so be it. We live in a democracy dont we?

So if Pakistan came up with a version of religiously motivated apartheid on the South African model, which was based on skin color, would that be okay by this logic?
 
So if Pakistan came up with a version of religiously motivated apartheid on the South African model, which was based on skin color, would that be okay by this logic?

I think what SK was suggesting was that the laws are not being enforced with clarity in my opinion. But that they are laws and a such its the political leaders that need to sort it out if there is something unfair or draconian
 
Chogy american govt has a part to play and should pressurise the likes of zardari who has large property holdings in america to play their part. American govt all too ready to interfere in other matters. This is the type of things they should or could be helpful in.

Problem... the U.S. pressuring ANYBODY, especially a declared Muslim State, results in terrible backlash. A large percentage of this forum itself discusses (and condemns) such pressure, regardless of its form - military, geopolitical, or economic.

Stop interfering with the internal affairs of sovereign nations!

Is this not a common mantra? We are "pressuring" what raggedy form of governance exists in Afghanistan, and people hate it. So how are women to be freed, minorities allowed to exist or worship in peace, when the majority don't want it?
 
I think what SK was suggesting was that the laws are not being enforced with clarity in my opinion. But that they are laws and a such its the political leaders that need to sort it out if there is something unfair or draconian

The problem is not the "clarity" of the law. The problem is the law ITSELF.
 
The best answer (surprise, coming from an American) is a Bill of Human Rights, installed in the nation's documents, that prevents abuses. There might be differences, but the ideal list of inalienable rights would be the standard:

1) Freedom to worship without interference
2) Freedom to speak against the government, politicians, leaders of any sort
3) Due process of law

etc.
 
The problem is not the "clarity" of the law. The problem is the law ITSELF.

I think no one should be allowed to disrespect any other persons religous belief but I take your point its not easy and or practical to formulate these in practice and can lead to a slippery slope when applied as in pakistan
 
With respect Ahmad, like any country, Pakistan has a right to decide the laws that will govern its land and if thats supporting the blasphemy law so be it. We live in a democracy dont we?

I think what SK was suggesting was that the laws are not being enforced with clarity in my opinion. But that they are laws and a such its the political leaders that need to sort it out if there is something unfair or draconian
One problem with the arguments above is that the religious extremists refuse to allow those who would challenge the laws or criticize them and therefore change the 'mindset' of the majority currently supposedly supporting these laws, space in the public sphere to do so.

The judge who sentenced the murdering criminal Baighairat Qadri to death has had death threats against him, with some religious leaders highlighting the murder of another judge in the past, who freed a Christian girl who was unfairly accused of Blasphemy.

Even if we are to argue 'majority rule', those who disagree with the policies and laws adopted by the majority should have the freedom to campaign for and promote their ideas.

So the Blasphemy law cannot be said to be a 'majority law', since those calling for its repeal and change are threatened, silenced and killed, and therefor there is no open and fair discussion in society about the laws.

Currently these laws are the result of 'thug rule', not 'majority rule'.
 

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