Pakistan emblematic of using blasphemy laws to repress religious minorities.

BY JULIA ALTMANN

Ramesh Kumar Malhi, a Pakistani Hindu man, was charged last week with blasphemy after a Islamic cleric accused him of delivering medicine wrapped in verses from the Koran.

His case follows the recent arrival of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman, in Canada following her imprisonment for eight years in Pakistan on charges of blasphemy. Bibi’s case brought the issue of blasphemy laws in the Middle East back to forefront of discussion, especially as they relate to religious minorities.Bibi, a Roman Catholic, gained international recognition when Muslim villagers accused her of insulting the Prophet Mohammad in 2009. Days later, she was dragged out of her home and beaten by a mob, after which she was taken into custody and sentenced to death.Two of Bibi’s strongest supporters and open critics of fundamentalist Islam, Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab, and Shabaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s first federal minister of minority affairs, paid for their support with their lives. They were shot and killed within two months of each other in 2011.

In January, Pakistan’s Supreme Court upheld its October 2018 decision to acquit Bibi on the grounds of lack of evidence, and she was granted asylum by Ottawa in early May, reuniting with her family which had already been in hiding there due to threats from religious extremists. According to Zohra Yusuf, a council member at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Bibi’s case sharply divided Pakistani society.

“Religious parties demonstrated violently for her execution, while rights groups campaigned for her acquittal and safety,” Yusuf told The Media Line. “However, her acquittal could have been a turning point for reforms, [but] this opportunity was lost as the government was more concerned about maintaining order.”Over 1,500 people were charged under Pakistan’s blasphemy law from 1987 to 2017, according to the Center for Social Justice, a Lahore-based religious minority rights group.Although none of the accused have been executed, extrajudicial punishment was carried out in some cases, and about 70 of those charged with blasphemy were killed by vigilantes. In 2014, a young Christian couple, Shahzad Masih and his pregnant wife Shama, were beaten and had their bodies burned in an industrial brick kiln following allegations that the couple desecrated a Koran. The charges were later found to be false.

According to Yusuf, several efforts to reform the laws on blasphemy have failed to bear fruit.

“Any amendment would need a two-thirds majority in parliament. But legislators tend to cave in when it comes to pressure from the [hardline Islamic] religious parties, even though they have minimal political representation ” she explained.

Jeremy Barker, director of the Middle East Action Team at the Religious Freedom Institute (RFI), concurred.

“These laws are subject to influence from vocal religious majorities who threaten physical violence or exert undue pressure on the judiciary to bring [blasphemy] charges against minorities,” he told The Media Line.Indeed, scholars at the RFI have documented a correlation between enforced blasphemy laws and greater levels of religion-inspired terrorism. In fact, according to their findings, countries that enforce blasphemy laws experience six-and-a-half times more religion-related terrorism. And Pakistan isn’t the sole regional enforcer of such statutes.