Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide

by Paul Marshall

  Hindus

  According to the 1998 census, Hindus, including scheduled castes, comprise almost 2 percent of Pakistan’s population and are concentrated in the province of Sindh. They suffer from discrimination, economic hardships, and religious persecution and are often randomly attacked in general retaliation for attacks, or perceived attacks, on Muslims in India. They are also targeted by blasphemy accusations, although perhaps not as frequently as Ahmadis or Christians are targeted.

  One example took place in July 2001. A Hindu, Ram Chand, who lived in Chack, Bahawalpur district, was constructing a bathroom floor for Mohammed Safdar. Safdar accused the laborer of defiling the name of the Prophet by carving it on a brick and took the brick to the village head. Deeply offended by this so-called act of blasphemy, local Muslims attacked homes and other property belonging to Hindus and also beat up Hindu women and children. Meanwhile, the police arrested Chand and his son, Ram-Yazman, charging them with blasphemy. Local Muslims reacted to these charges even more ferociously, blocking the road for hours and demanding that all Hindus be expelled from the area. Police arrested twenty Muslims for attacking Hindus.72

  On April 9, 2008, a Hindu factory worker in Karachi, Jagdesh Kumar, was beaten to death by coworkers after allegedly making remarks that blasphemed against Islam. Factory guards made a failed attempt to take Kumar into protective custody, while police officers who responded to the incident were later suspended for their failure to take proper action to prevent Kumar’s death.73

  Muslims

  While charged proportionally less than religious minorities, Muslims, including Shias, Sufis, and Muslim reformers, but excluding Ahmadis, account for about half of those targeted by blasphemy accusations. In fact, adherents of the Deobandi school of Islam, from which the Taliban sprang, and which has been increasing its strength throughout much of Pakistan, have been carrying out a largely underreported violent campaign against Pakistani Shias and Sufis on the grounds that they are apostates.74

  Mohammed Yousuf Ali, of Lahore, a Sufi mystic, was charged with blasphemy based on accusations that he claimed that he was a prophet. He denied the charge, and several of the prosecution witnesses admitted that they did not fully understand what he was actually teaching. However, the local media vilified him, and his trial was held in camera. On August 5, 2000, he was convicted of blasphemy under section 295-C and sentenced to death, thirty-five years of hard labor, and a fine. Ali was kept in Kotlakpat Jail in Lahore under poor conditions; he became ill, developing difficulty in speaking and in using his fingers, but was denied adequate medical treatment.75

  Zahid Shah was charged with blasphemy and was jailed in September 1994. His detention was based on a complaint by an imam, Maulvi Faqir Mohammed, who said that Zahid had desecrated the Qur’an and made derogatory remarks about Muhammad.76 In 1997, he was released on bail by a local court and went to live with his brother at Faisalabad while the case was pending. In 2002, he returned home and unwisely became involved in an argument with some locals. Upon hearing that he had returned, Faqir Mohammed convened a Panchayat—council of elders—on July 5, 2002. After evening prayers, the imam broadcasted a fatwa over mosque loudspeakers, urging people to kill Zahid. Assailants broke into his house, hauled him outside, and beat him with iron rods and sticks in front of his wife and brother. His brother begged for mercy and promised that the accused would leave the village forever, but neither the mob nor the imam accepted these pleas. After Zahid lost consciousness, the mob dragged him to the village’s main intersection, where people from nearby villages quickly gathered; and when he regained consciousness, the mob stoned him to death. Police arrived hours later, did not arrest anyone, and did not send the body for an autopsy. No case was registered against the culprits because Zahid’s relatives were afraid to press charges. Several days later, the police did arrest thirty people, including the imam, for their role in the stoning.77

  Some cases developed over allegations of what appears to be accidents. In 1996, one man slipped and fell onto a stove while holding a Qur’an. A page was burned, and the unfortunate individual was imprisoned. After a cleric incited them against the alleged blasphemer, a mob accosted and burned him alive in his jail cell while he was awaiting trial.78

  A blasphemy accusation similarly provoked the murder of Najeeb Zafar, owner of a leather factory in Muridke in Punjab and a member of one of Pakistan’s leading industrialist families, by other factory workers on August 5, 2009. A factory supervisor, Qasim, objected when he saw Zafar taking down an old wall calendar and remove tape from it since the calendar had “holy verses” on it. After quarreling with the owner, Qasim incited factory workers and local residents with a charge of Qur’an desecration, and they stormed the factory, seized weapons from security guards, and murdered Zafar and an employee.79

  The Pakistan government’s ongoing war against the Taliban overlaps with repression of purported blasphemy. In February 2009, the government and the Taliban signed a short-lived agreement pledging to enforce sharia law in the Swat Valley region, partially in recognition that the Taliban were already in effective control. A spate of violence followed in the frontier provinces and tribal areas. In March 2009, three days after a threatening letter arrived at a Peshawar mausoleum commemorating the seventeenth-century Sufi poet Baba, a bomb exploded and damaged a portion of the shrine. The letter had warned against further promotion of “shrine culture” and spoke disparagingly of the fact that women were coming to pray at the shrine as well as men.80 On July 1, 2010, there was a suicide bomb attack by three people on the Data Darbar shrine in Lahore, which commemorates an eleventh-century Sufi saint, Ali bin Usman, and is probably Pakistan’s most popular Sufi shrine. The attacks took place on a Thursday evening, the most popular evening for crowds to gather; fifty-two people were killed and nearly 200 wounded. Although there was no claim of responsibility, Islamist extremists often accuse Sufis of being heretical, and officials maintain that it was the work of Punjabi Taliban.81

  Muslim Reformers

  Mohammad Younas Shaikh

  According to scholar Akbar Ahmed, “perhaps dozens” of Pakistani educators that have spoken out in favor of reforms have faced blasphemy accusations from their students. Among them is Dr. Mohammad Younas Shaikh, a professor who taught at the medical college in Islamabad. He did post-graduate studies in Dublin and London, and he was a participant in the Pakistan-India Forum for Peace and Democracy, a member of the South Asian Fraternity, the South Asian Union, and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. In 1990, he started an organization called “The Enlightenment,” dedicated to discussing Islam in a contemporary context. As its name indicates, it draws inspiration from the European Enlightenment and Renaissance. However, Shaikh still considers himself a devout Muslim and draws inspiration from the Qur’an.82

  On October 1, 2000, Shaikh had suggested at a meeting of the South Asian Union that the line of control in Kashmir between India and Pakistan should become the international border. In response, a Pakistani officer threatened him, saying, “I will crush the heads of those that talk like this.” The following day, Shaikh reportedly stated in response to a student’s query that Muhammad was neither a prophet nor a Muslim before he was forty, since there was at that point no Islam (according to Islamic teaching, Muhammad received Qur’anic revelation when he was forty). Shaikh was also reported to have said that Muhammad had not observed Muslim practices regarding circumcision or the removal of underarm hair before that age.83

  Some students thought he contradicted the Muslim belief that Muhammad was predestined to become a prophet and hence was blasphemous. That evening, one of them, who was also employed at the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, complained to a cleric that the doctor had blasphemed.84 An organization that frequently targets alleged blasphemers (usually Ahmadis), called the Movement for the Finality of the Prophet, lodged a complaint against him and also incited a mob that threatened to burn the college and the local police station.85 On October 4, Shaikh was arrested on blasphemy ch
arges.

  His trial took place in closed session in the Central Jail. Even his lawyers received a fatwa calling them apostates, and their childrens’ lives were threatened.86 On August 18, 2001, he was found guilty and sentenced to death.87 He spent two years in solitary confinement in the Central Gaol in Rawalpindi. The two judges on the Lahore High Court could not reach an agreement on his appeal, and a senior judge to whom the case was referred on July 15, 2002, did not make a decision for over a year. On October 9, 2003, this judge found the original judgment unsound. However, he opted to remand the case back to a lower court for retrial rather than acquit Shaikh. At the retrial, Shaikh conducted his own defense and was acquitted on November 21, 2003. He says he was inspired by Sir Thomas More’s speech in A Man for All Seasons. To avoid further attacks, he was released secretly. He remained in Pakistan for a time but, when his accusers sought to appeal his acquittal, fled to Europe.88

  Faraz Jawad

  On July 7, 2002, during mosque prayers, Faraz Jawad, an American Navy engineer who was visiting his family in Jaranwala, objected to the imam’s political speech that cursed the Pakistan government and the Americans. He said to the imam, “Instead of cursing America, you should teach us Islam.” The imam, Hafiz Abdul Latif, demanded that those in the mosque kill Jawad on the spot since he was an American and, as such, an enemy of Muslims. Jawad managed to escape with his relative Mohammed Naeem. In response, dozens of people attacked Naeem’s house, armed with iron rods, sticks, and other weapons. Naeem called the police, who dispersed the mob, but only after promising the rioters that Jawad would be charged with blasphemy. Jawad contacted the U.S. embassy, which intervened and asked the government to save his life. Police subsequently charged the imam and twelve villagers with disturbing the peace, inciting the people’s religious feelings, and attacking Faraz Jawad’s relatives.89

  Najam Sethi

  Najam Sethi, the chief editor of one of Pakistan’s most respected English newspapers, Daily Times, is Cambridge-educated and a recipient of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom award. He is well known for his paper’s stance against Islamic extremism. In July 2008, he received death threats, including a picture of a man whose throat had been slit, for publishing a cartoon of Umme Hassan, the director of a radical women’s madrassa, who was teaching her students to wage jihad. Hassan, as well as local clerics from the Red Mosque, condemned the cartoon as blasphemous and in so doing, according to Mr. Sethi, “have provoked people to kill me and my staff.”90

  Closing

  In Pakistan, as in other countries with blasphemy laws, people can, in practice, be charged with any of a range of vague offenses, such as damaging “religious feelings.” Rules of evidence are commonly violated, and the laws are very frequently used to settle private disputes, grudges, and vendettas. During blasphemy hearings, religious extremists often pack courthouses and threaten the accused, especially if there is the possibility of an acquittal. To make matters worse, in a vicious ratchet effect, those who question the blasphemy laws can then themselves be accused of questioning Islam, thus becoming suspects under the very law that they have challenged.

  This ratcheting effect came into stark and violent relief in early 2011, when two brave politicians were brutally murdered specifically because of their calls to repeal the laws. Salman Taseer, a Muslim, was the governor of Punjab, Pakistan’s wealthiest and most populous state, and a friend of President Zardari. He was also a voice of moderation, one of the most prominent in the country, who worked for a free society and fought for the rights of all Pakistanis, Muslim and non-Muslim. He publicly called for a pardon for Asia Bibi and persistently criticized the blasphemy laws, calling them a “black law,” and arguing that they were pivotal to the future of the country. On January 4, 2011, he was killed by one of his own security guards, Mumtaz Qadri, who has since been feted as a hero in much of Pakistan. Taseer’s daughter, Sara, observed, “This is a message to every liberal to shut up or be shot.”91

  Then, on March 2, 2011, Shahbaz Bhatti, federal Minster of Minority Affairs and the highest-ranking Christian politician in the country, was shot dead as he was visiting his mother. In leaflets left at the scene, Al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban Movement in Punjab claimed responsibility for killing the “infidel Christian.” Bhatti, who has been compared to Martin Luther King, devoted his life to religious freedom and other human rights, was well aware that he was targeted for death, and, in a video he left to be played in the event that he was killed, said he would not change his principles and was ready to die for his work.92

  As we have seen, so far, none of the convicted in Pakistan has in fact been judicially executed, in part because the trials can take many years, and scheduling an execution can take even longer. However, mobs and vigilantes have killed hundreds of the accused.93 This intimidation means that while, in elections, the vast majority of Pakistanis reject radical parties, a free press and free debate on religion and politics is quashed. A New York Times report summarizes the country’s predicament: “[A]n intolerant, aggressive minority terrorizes a more open-minded, peaceful majority, while an opportunistic political class dithers, benefiting from alliances with the aggressors.”94 However, when former President Musharraf sought to change the laws, militants warned, “If the government tries to finish it, the government itself will be finished,” a threat personified in the killings of Taseer and Bhatti.

  A more hopeful note was struck when, on March 9, 2011, Pakistan’s embassy to the United States held a memorial service for Bhatti, and Ambassador Husain Haqqani’s moving eulogy went far beyond formal diplomatic niceties and cut to the heart of the matter:

  “[M]y colleagues in the embassy from all wings of the embassy, from our accounts department to our military leaders who serve here, to the diplomats, and to the non-diplomatic staff in this embassy—we all discussed this and it was our collective decision that we will not only pay tribute to Shahbaz Bhatti today but also to use this as an occasion to reiterate our commitment to a pluralist Pakistan, a tolerant Pakistan, a moderate Pakistan—a Pakistan in harmony with the rest of the world.… For the sake of Pakistan, for the sake of Islam, for the sake of humanity, and for the sake of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto, Shaheed Salman Taseer, and now sadly our brother Shahbaz Bhatti, it is time for us to stand up, courageously against intolerance, against discrimination and against extremism. My friends, “If not now, when?”

  Haqqani concluded: “Those who would murder a Salman Taseer or a Shahbaz Bhatti deface my religion, my prophet, my Koran and my Allah. Yet there is an overpowering, uncomfortable and unconscionable silence from the great majority of Pakistanis who respect the law, respect the Holy Book, and respect other religions.… This silence endangers the future of my nation, and to the extent the silence empowers extremists, it endangers the future of peace and the future of the civilized world.… When a Shahbaz Bhatti is murdered, and we remain silent, we have died with him.”95

  6

  Afghanistan

  In a 2002 interview with the Washington Post, Sayed Abdullah described being brutally tortured for months by Taliban agents. Abdullah, a Red Cross employee with some knowledge of English and an interest in the world outside Afghanistan, had a 500-book library that included two Bibles, one in English and one in Dari. In late 1999, the Taliban’s Intelligence Division took him into custody and searched his house. When they found the two Bibles, they immediately assumed they’d found evidence that Abdullah was an apostate. Abdullah maintained throughout every interrogation that he was still a Muslim and tried to explain, “I have those books for information, for learning, not for changing religions. Everyone should know about other religions and other parts of the world.” His Taliban adversaries were unimpressed with this explanation and instead tortured him repeatedly. Meanwhile, they demanded that he inform them about whom he was working for and provide them with names of others he had converted. A prison record found after the fall of the Taliban listed Abdullah as jailed for “belonging to t
he Christian religion.” He stated that his torturers chanted, “God is blessing us. God will reward us,” as they beat him and repeatedly accused him of being a Christian convert. Eventually, Abdullah made a false confession in order to end the torture. A Taliban official then threatened him with death: “We will take you to the roof of the Ministry of Communications.… First we will burn you. Then we will throw you over the edge so that everyone can see you and know the punishment for converting from Islam.” Eventually, Abdullah’s mother was informed about his situation and was able to bribe officials to obtain his release. Because of what he endured in the Taliban’s prisons, Abdullah now requires a brace to stand and suffers from chronic pain as well as problems with his kidneys, short-term memory, hearing, and sight.1