Pakistan and the blasphemy law – the state can and must do more to protect its religious minorities

By Mahnoor Khan, 2nd year MINT

The date of August 16th, 2023, may be of no particular note to most people around the world, but it will forever be etched in the history of Pakistan for bearing witness to one of the country’s most shocking episodes of mob violence against the Pakistani Christian community.

An angry mob stormed through the Jaranwala district in the city of Faisalabad in the Punjab province of Pakistan, vandalising over 80 Christian homes and 19 churches in the area. Video footage also shows the mob desecrating a Christian cemetery. Although there were no fatalities, as many Muslim residents of the town rushed to provide shelter to their Christian neighbours, the incident terrorised an entire community.

For many Pakistanis, the incident brought back memories of the 2009 Gojra riots, in which eight Christian citizens, including a minor, were killed by a mob after two men from the community were accused of defiling pages from the Holy Quran.

Blasphemy against Islam, the official state religion, continues to be a sensitive topic in Pakistan. Mob lynchings of individuals accused of blasphemy in Pakistan have made headlines around the world in recent years. In February of this year, a man accused of desecrating pages of the Quran was seized from his prison cell by an angry mob and lynched in broad daylight. In 2017, Mashal Khan, a 23-year-old Muslim student at the Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan, was beaten to death by a mob of fellow students on university grounds after accusations that he had posted blasphemous content on Facebook. In 2021, 49-year-old Priyantha Kumara, a Sri Lankan national who worked as a garment factory manager in the city of Sialkot, was similarly lynched by a mob after being accused of blasphemy.

Perhaps the most famous example of how allegations of blasphemy can upend a person’s life in Pakistan remains the case of Aasiya Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman who spent eight years on death row after being accused of committing blasphemy. Despite the Supreme Court of Pakistan eventually overturning all charges against her in 2018, she nevertheless had no choice but to leave Pakistan and seek asylum in Canada due to fears that her life would be in danger were she to remain in her own country.

The Christian population of Pakistan has dwindled over time. According to the 2017 national census, they make up 1.27% of Pakistan’s population.

The Pakistan blasphemy law, which is routinely criticized by human rights groups and scholars for being too draconian, is a legacy of British colonial rule in the subcontinent. The state of Pakistan, upon its creation in 1947, inherited colonial-era blasphemy laws contained within the 1860 Indian Penal Code. The British laws declared it a crime to disturb a religious gathering, trespass on burial grounds, insult religious beliefs, or desecrate places of worship. In the 1980s, military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq’s government added further clauses to these laws in a bid to Islamize the Penal Code. Section 295-B of the Pakistan Penal Code forbids the desecration of the Quran, while Section 295-C forbids derogatory remarks against the Prophet Muhammad. The minimum penalty for individuals found guilty of either offence is life imprisonment, while the maximum sentence is the death penalty. Although the state has never executed someone for the crime of blasphemy, dozens of Pakistanis have been murdered by mobs or self-appointed vigilantes for alleged blasphemy before their cases even made it to trial. Critics say that the harsh punishments prescribed for blasphemy embolden religious hardliners to take matters into their own hands and target people accused of blasphemy.

In a country where Islamic religious identity is so deeply entrenched within the state and society, publicly calling for the blasphemy law to be reformed can lead to dangerous consequences for pro-reform activists, citizens, and civil society actors.

At the same time, I know from my discussions with fellow Pakistanis, both at home and abroad, that there is strong support from the citizenry for the state to take meaningful action to protect its religious minorities. Many Pakistanis do acknowledge that blasphemy allegations are weaponized to settle personal vendettas and persecute religious minorities. For Pakistan to be a pluralistic country that truly embraces the ideals of religious tolerance, the state needs to protect the lives and property of all its citizens.

The state of Pakistan needs to enforce the rule of law so that mobs of angry men do not terrorise religious minorities with impunity. Awareness and respect must be cultivated across society for all faiths and ways of life. School curricula can foster inter-religious harmony by introducing the study of comparative religion and teaching pluralistic values to young, impressionable minds.

As a Muslim citizen of Pakistan, I am appalled by the state’s failure to safeguard the rights of its religious minorities. No religious community should have to live in fear of retribution from the religious majority. If Pakistan wishes to attract tourism and investment and cultivate favourable views about the state of human rights within its borders amongst the international community, it must honour its constitution by implementing safeguards for its non-Muslim citizens. Those who participate in illegal mob violence must be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
The law in Pakistan states that only a Muslim citizen may ascend to the rank of the country’s Prime Minister or President. Here, the law undeniably and openly makes a distinction between Pakistani Muslim and non-Muslim citizens, discriminating against the latter on the basis of their religious identity. The last time Pakistan had a Christian Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was in the 1960s. Perhaps discriminatory and prejudiced attitudes towards Pakistan’s religious minorities will remain entrenched in society until we are finally ready to accept that any Pakistani citizen should be able to qualify for the highest offices in the land based on pure merit, no matter what their religious identity may be.