Fifteen years ago, the Zia ul-Haq military government, in a gift to the religious conservatives, promulgated Pakistan’s infamous blasphemy law. Under this statute, those accused of “blasphemy” could be tried by a court and subject to the most severe possible penalty the state could impose on its citizens, namely death. For a variety of reasons, this has been turned into a political tool of the religious groups (and perhaps “fanatics” is not too strong a term) to attack their opponents. With it, they intend to monopolize the way anyone in Pakistan can discuss religion.
Most recently, Dr. Younus Shaik, a devout Muslim Pakistani physician and University lecturer in Karachi had a complaint filed against him for blasphemy based on obviously true statements he made about the Prophet. The lecturer noted that the Prophet was not born practicing the Five Pillars of Islam, and engaged in and introduced Islamic practices only after he became the prophet of Islam. What is remarkable about that? Isn’t that what we teach our children in the Masjid? Salat, zakat, or reciting the Kalimah are not instincts that infants have, they are taught and learned. Until he became the prophet and received the Quran, Muhammad did not do these things.
And yet, these ideas were enough to irritate the usual suspects, and a trial was organized, the end result of which was conviction and sentencing to death. We don’t need Khomeini’s fatwas or the Taliban’s outrage du jour to tarnish the name of Islam. We are quite capable of that ourselves. At the recent racism conference in South Africa, Pakistan’s foreign minister complained that biased media was giving Islam a bad name. I don’t in any way disagree with that.
The CBS show 60 Minutes was recently caught falsely translating the Arabic of a Palestinian would-be suicide bomber. When asked about the motive, he responded with words about love of Palestine and ending oppression, but the show translated his Arabic as saying he wanted the “70 Virgins of Paradise” to entertain him. This is outrageous and deliberate. However, when Pakistani courts are sentencing professors to death for innocuous, and true, remarks, that is not a Western plot. And then of course, there is the disgraceful episode that ended with the death of the Frontier Post, an important independent newspaper from Peshawar.
The current military government has been unfriendly to the religious parties, but has consistently backed down when they have resisted positive changes. This is a strange political fear of a small minority of Pakistanis. In every free election in Pakistan’s history, these groups have consistently failed to capture more than 15% of the votes. And yet, they have exerted a damaging and powerful hold on policy. Much of this was the result of previous governments finding them to be useful allies, particularly Zia’s regime. His policy of building his government’s legitimacy on Islam was a mockery of Jinnah’s vision, and rather presumptuous at that. Who was Zia to “Islamize” Pakistan? But as a result, all sorts of bad laws were put on the books, including the blasphemy law.
When Javed Jabbar first visited Los Angeles, a few months after Musharraf took power, he stated that the blasphemy law was going to be repealed. In fact, the government did not repeal it, but did make a major change. They decided that a magistrate had to review an FIR of blasphemy for merit before it could go forward. In this way, it was hoped that some of the more outrageous excesses committed under this law would be curtailed, and the ability of certain religious groups to use the law against their opponents would be ended. The mullahs saw this for what it was and rallied sharply against it. After holding firm for a few days, the government caved in to them and canceled the changes. Obviously, they felt that expending political capital on this fight was not worth it, as it would interfere with their ability to implement economic reforms.
At some point, Pakistan must get rid of this law. Pakistan survived its first several decades without it; it is not a law that prevents some terrible catastrophe from occurring. The next (democratic) government will probably also not fight the religious groups on this. As this government’s last act, it should delete this statute from the books, and allow the next government the benefit of blaming their predecessor for the change.