By Christie Blatchford
She was arrested in June 2009 after a Muslim colleague complained that she made derogatory remarks about Islam’s prophet during when Bibi wanted to drink from the same water bowl as her Muslim co-workers
It was a reader who prompted me to learn (and now write) about Asia Bibi.
“Did you hear about the Palestinian Muslim woman who has been sentenced to death by Israel for saying, ‘Muhammad is the final and best prophet of God’?” Stephen Harris asked.
“Of course not, because it didn’t happen.
“If it did, the world would be upside down by now. Massive protests would be staged in the West, while the Muslim world would riot en masse.
“What has happened is that Pakistan has condemned a Christian woman to death for saying, ‘My Jesus died for me. What did your Muhammad ever do for you?’
“Asia Bibi has been on death row for eight years, yet most of the world has never even heard of her, and virtually nobody of note has said a word in protest.”
Every word he said is true, though actually Bibi has been in prison for more than nine years now. She was arrested in June of 2009 after a Muslim colleague complained that she had made derogatory remarks about Islam’s prophet during an argument sparked when Bibi wanted to drink from the same water bowl as her Muslim co-workers.
The complaint was backed by a local imam and in November 2010, Bibi was convicted and sentenced to death for blasphemy.
Four years later, the Lahore High Court upheld her death sentence, though the execution was stayed until July of 2015, when the Pakistani Supreme Court agreed to hear her appeal. That was originally slated for the fall of 2016, but when one of the three judges had to recuse himself, it was delayed again.
The hearing was supposed to be rescheduled “soon,” but in a recent interview with DW, or Deutsche Welle, Germany’s public international broadcaster, Bibi’s lawyer, Saif-ul-Malook, appeared to hold out little hope for a quick appeal.
“I think it is not a very high priority case for the court,” he said. “The last time I met the Supreme Court registrar, he told me that over 2,000 appeals against death sentences were pending before the court.”
The lawyer is a brave fellow.
At least two other prominent Pakistanis have been killed for speaking out in Bibi’s support — the former governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, and former minister for minorities Shabbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s only Christian government minister.
(About 97 per cent of Pakistan’s people are Muslims, though according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, because of how the blasphemy laws are used — often to settle personal disputes that have little to do with religion — Muslims make up the majority of those arrested under the laws. Ahmadis (officially declared non-Muslim in 1973), Christians and Hindus are also persecuted. The laws date back to India’s British rulers and were inherited by Pakistan after the partition of India. The laws were expanded in the 1980s, with the recommended penalty “death or imprisonment for life.”)
Bhatti was gunned down little more than two months later, outside his Islamabad home.
They had separately and together championed Bibi’s cause and spoken out against the laws, probably the last prominent Pakistanis to do so.
There is little hope for different from Pakistan’s new prime minister, the former prominent cricket star Imran Khan.
In the run-up to the recent general election, he staunchly defended the blasphemy laws — specifically the clause in the constitution that mandates death for any “imputation, insinuation or innuendo” against the prophet.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week called Khan to offer congratulations on his win and tweeted a photo of himself talking on the call.
And that, for my reader Harris and now for me, is the salt in the Aasia Bibi wound — that this government, which so smarmily wraps itself in its anti-racism/pro-diversity creed, has had virtually nothing to say about the plight of the 53-year-old mother of five.
There are two prominent Pakistani-Canadians in federal politics.
One is Salma Ataullahjan, Canada’s first senator of Pakistani and Pashtun descent (she was born in Marden, near the Afghan border). She came to Canada in 1980 as a young bride and was described, by former prime minister Stephen Harper who appointed her to the Senate, as “bringing a Muslim voice into Canadian political life.”
Ataullahjan has spoken out about Bibi, and indeed, shortly after her 2010 conviction, visited the country to see flood-ravaged areas and actually raised Bibi’s case, and the blasphemy laws, with senior Pakistani ministers.
And, when Shahbaz Bhatti was murdered the following year, she and then Multicultural Minister Jason Kenney, as well as other Canadian embassy staff, attended his funeral. She spoke poignantly in the Senate about sitting “by my friend’s coffin.”
The other is Iqra Khalid, Liberal MP for Mississauga-Erin Mills in Ontario.
Harris says he tried to interest her in the issue — she is after all a young Pakistani-Canadian too, born in Pakistan — but “she wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence, let alone grace me with a response.”
And besides, Khalid has made her name as the woman who tabled the M-103 anti-Islamophobia motion that passed in the House last spring. Her entire cred, from the moment she first ran for office, rests on her first-generation-immigrant bona fides.
I couldn’t find a word she has ever said in defence of Bibi, or against the blasphemy laws. I thought I must have missed it in my search, so I wrote her and her media assistant, Anas Marwah, early Wednesday, saying just that (“Perhaps I missed a speech?” I wrote) and asking if I could have her comment. I re-sent the message four or five times, left messages for both Khalid and Marwah, called both Ottawa office and constituency offices, and finally got Marwah briefly on the phone. He promised to get back to me and never did.
DAWN, Pakistan’s oldest and leading English-language newspaper, ran a beautiful piece when Salman Taseer was killed. Days before he was murdered, he tweeted about his battle to defend Bibi.
“I was under huge pressure sure 2 cow down b4 rightest pressure on blasphemy. Refused. Even if I’m the last man standing.”
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