Minority rights: Silence, increasing intolerance make for another grim year

Pakistan

Minority rights: Silence, increasing intolerance make for another grim year

By Ali Usman
Published: December 29, 2011

Minority communities, activists suffered huge setbacks in 2011, beginning with the deaths of Taseer and Bhatti. DESIGN: FAIZAN DAWOOD

LAHORE: Silence became the biggest atrocity against minorities in Pakistan this year. With the rise of the phenomenon of crushing the voice of minority advocates and increasing intolerance, 2011 remained a grim year for minorities in the country.

The year opened with the assassination of then Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer by his own security guard Mumtaz Qadri in Islamabad on January 4. Taseer was killed for speaking against the blasphemy law and raising a voice in favour of Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death on charges of blasphemy.

Minority rights activists believe that the incident was a huge setback as not only did they lose a supporter, but the PPP-led government also distanced itself from those who supported amendments in the blasphemy law.

What was equally tragic, if not more, was the fact that Qadri was hailed as a hero by many. “The assassin of the governor who happened to be his guard was garlanded by a group of people. This raised many questions about the protection of minorities,” said Executive Council member of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Nadeem Anthony.

The second major setback followed closely, with the murder of late minister for minorities Shahbaz Bhatti on March 2 in Islamabad.

Bhatti also supported Aasia Bibi and had been playing a role in bringing amendments to the blasphemy law.

“The interior minister has said that the extremist group Sipah-e-Sahaba is behind his murder, yet they are still at large,” said Anthony.

Another tragic incident occurred in Mastung, Balochistan on September 20, when 29 people, mostly from the Hazara Shia community, were killed in two separate targeted incidents.

According to data gathered by The Express Tribune, from 1986 to 2011, at least 39 people booked under the blasphemy law have been killed before or during their trial. Of these, 18 were Christians, 16 were Muslims, two were Ahmadis, one was Hindu and two were unidentified.

Less killings, increasing Intolerance

“The situation of religious minorities in Pakistan progressively worsened,” stated the Working Group on Communities Vulnerable, established by the HRCP.

The group referred not only to violence against members of religious communities but also against the growing intolerance in society.

The group, in its report ‘Life at Risk’, noted that threats to religious minority communities have grown in direct proportion to a rise in militancy. “The factors for the rise in excesses against religious minority communities include not only the advance of militants and religious extremists but also the government’s failure to protect the basic human rights of these communities. No law can make anyone like a person, but if the law and the textbook label a citizen as inferior and another as superior, feelings of dislike increases,” the group maintained.

National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) Executive Head Peter Jacob told The Express Tribune, “The number of discrimination cases against minorities in Pakistan in 2011 isn’t as much as it used to be in previous years; however the scale is larger this year. The phenomenon to silence the voices that speak for minorities is more dangerous and terrible and this is what happened this year”.

Positive steps for minorities

In 2011, several positive laws for minorities were also made. The Hindu Marriage Act has been submitted in the National Assembly and the government is considering making it a treasury bill, Jacob said.

The draft of Christian Marriage and Divorce Act has also been reviewed and is likely to be tabled in parliament.

“For the first time, four seats have been reserved in the Senate for minorities for which election will be held in March,” said Napoleon Qayyum, a Christian rights activist.

Way Forward

The working group further suggested that the quota reserved for minorities must be strictly observed. The group suggests that the lack of tolerance for religious minorities stems from textbooks, which should impart knowledge about all religions in Pakistan.

It suggests that all discriminatory laws against minorities should also be abolished and the National Commission for Minorities should be developed into a body that is independent and powerful.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 29th, 2011.

Copyrighted © 2011 The Express Tribune News Network
URL: http://tribune.com.pk/?p=313492

Qadri supporters rail against US, Ahmadis

Pakistan Punjab

Qadri supporters rail against US, Ahmadis

By Rana Tanveer
Published: October 10, 2011

Sunni Ittehad announces ‘Remove government’ train march on Nov 21. PHOTO: AFP

LAHORE: Speakers at the Sunni Ittehad Council’s (SIC) National Khatam-i-Nabuwat Conference railed against the death sentence handed to Mumtaz Qadri for the murder of Salmaan Taseer, as well as Ahmedis and America, on Sunday.

SIC Chairman Sahibzada Fazle Karim announced that they would hold a ‘Remove government’ train march from Rawalpindi to Karachi on November 21 to press for Qadri’s release. “We will not let them hang Mumtaz Qadri,” he said to loud cheers. He said that Islam allowed the killing of a blasphemer.

Karim said Ahmedis were conspiring with America against Islam. He said that the SIC would fight for Islamic rule in Pakistan. They would also stop “the US dream of Indian supremacy in the subcontinent” from becoming a reality. He said the Sunni Tehrik was being victimised in Karachi and demanded that the government release its workers and leaders.

Jamat Ahle Sunnat (JAS) Nazim Aala Allama Syed Riaz Hussain Shah also spoke out against Ahmedis, saying they were “agents of anti-Pakistan forces” and involved in anti-state activities.

JAS Ameer Syed Mazhar Saeed Kazmi said appointing Ahmedis to key posts was a violation of the Constitution. He demanded that all Ahmedis be expelled from key posts. He said Ahmedis were created by the British.

At the end of the conference, the participants passed a resolution demanding the government end unemployment and power outages, and the president pardon Mumtaz Qadri.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10th, 2011.

Copyrighted © 2011 The Express Tribune News Network
URL: http://tribune.com.pk/story/270591/qadri-...us-ahmedis/

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have left even judges in fear of their lives

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have left even judges in fear of their lives

The furore over the killing of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer for allegedly licentious behaviour is merely the latest and most extreme example of an appallingly divisive issue

Declan Walsh guardian.co.uk, Monday 3 October 2011 20.00 BST

Mumtaz Qadri, sentenced to death for killing Taseer
Photograph: STRINGER/PAKISTAN/REUTERS

So he’s going to swing — perhaps. On Saturday a Pakistani judge sentenced Mumtaz Qadri, the police bodyguard who assassinated the Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer, to death by hanging. The young policeman smiled and thanked God. “My dream has come true,” he reportedly said.

It was a predictably theatrical turn from Qadri, a former nobody who murdered Taseer in cowardly fashion – shooting the governor 27 times in the back – and who has since revelled in the notoriety of his blood-stained celebrity. Equally predictable, alas, was the reaction on the streets outside.

Close to the courtroom in Rawalpindi, angry young men attacked a monument to the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, defacing her image on the spot where she died in a suicide bombing in 2007. Down in Lahore, turbaned men with long sticks surged through the ancient Anarkali bazaar, thrashing traders who refused to shutter their shops in sympathy for Qadri.

Meanwhile the clerics engineering the protests – old men with soft palms and tinder-dry beards – issued po-faced statements decrying the sentence. Qadri was a good Muslim, they insisted, and Taseer got what he deserved. The governor had offended them by advocating reforms to Pakistan’s antiquated blasphemy laws. In particularly they hated him for defending Aasia Bibi, a Christian mother-of-five sentenced to death under those laws last November. He deserved to die, they said.

Taseer’s wife and children, in contrast, were silent. They stayed at home, busy worrying about their son and sibling, Shahbaz. The 27-year-old was kidnapped in August as he purred through Lahore in a sports Mercedes – his father’s old car, in fact. Word has it he is being held in the tribal badlands of Waziristan; whether his captors are religious extremists, common criminals, or both, remains unclear.

The family is also reeling from character assaults. When Taseer was still alive, conservatives circulated photos of his children, lifted from their Facebook pages, showing them engaged in objectionable activity, such as dating and swimming in a swimming pool. After Taseer died, Qadri’s lawyers aired allegations about his sex life, drinking habits and apparent taste for pork – proof, they said, of a licentiousness that justified his cold-blooded murder.

The distasteful spectacle is partly a product of Pakistan’s social gulf. The Taseers inhabit the gilded bubble of a tiny elite whose westernised lives play out in Hello!-style photospreads of society magazines. In fact the Taseers own one of the most popular magazines. But it also goes to the heart of a bigger ideological crisis.

In theory, Pakistan is a country that welcomes all creeds and castes. But in practice it is proving to be anything but. Ask Faryal Bhatti, a teenage girl recently expelled from school for the crime of bad spelling.

A week ago last Thursday, the 13-year-old Christian girl was sitting an Urdu exam which involved a poem about the prophet Muhammad when she dropped a dot on the Urdu word naat (a devotional hymn to the prophet), accidentally turning it into lanaat, or damnation. Spotting the error, her teacher scolded her, beat her and reported the matter to the principal. The news soon flamed through her community in Havelian, 30 miles north of Islamabad.

Mullahs raged against Bhatti in their sermons; a school inquiry was hastily convened to examine the matter. Bhatti was expelled; her mother, a government nurse, was banished to another town, and the family has since fled Havelian in fear of their lives. All over a missing dot.

What accounts for such madness? In some parts Taseer’s death has inspired a McCarthyite atmosphere in which nobody wants to seen to be soft on blasphemy. But there is also a more profound reason. Devotion to the prophet Muhammad is central to the faith of the Barelvi Sunnis, who make up the majority of Pakistani Muslims. Even a whiff of insult to the prophet can whip up feverish anger.

The core problem, in fact, is that the blasphemy furore exposes the fragility of the Pakistani state – ideological, legal and security-wise. The mixing of religion and politics has long troubled Pakistan, but over the past 30 years that dangerous cocktail has been spiked by the army’s policy of nurturing extremists – hence men like Qadri who believe they have a right to kill in the name of God.

Meanwhile President Asif Ali Zardari’s government has shown zero leadership when it comes to reforming the blasphemy law – in fact, cowardly ministers have run a mile from any suggestion of change. And those who do dare to stand up for progress – or just the rule of law – live in fear of the next Qadri-style hit.

In truth, Taseer’s baby-faced killer is unlikely to be hanged any time soon. A lengthy appeals process is just starting, and the Zardari government has imposed an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment. But the judge who sentenced him, Pervez Ali Shah, faces perhaps shorter odds.

Judges who rule the “wrong” way on blasphemy face immense dangers in Pakistan. In 1997 extremists burst into the chambers of a high court judge who acquitted an accused blasphemer three years earlier, and shot him dead. Justice Shah will be fearing a repeat.

Reporters at Qadri’s hearing on Saturday noted that the judge slipped from the courtroom via the back door. He knows he is a marked man. Now only time will tell if the discredited Pakistani state can stand up for at least one good man.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...blasphemy-laws

Critics Say Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law is Being Abused

News

Critics Say Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law is Being Abused

Peter Fedynsky | New York June 24, 2011

Alleged assassin of Punjab province governor, Mumtaz Qadri is taken into custody

In January, the governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province, Salman Taseer, was assassinated by his bodyguard, who claimed Taseer had violated the country’s blasphemy law. Taseer, a Muslim, was shot dead in broad daylight on January 4 in Islamabad. His alleged assassin, Mumtaz Qadri, has yet to be tried, though he does not deny pulling the trigger. The late governor’s daughter, Shehrbano Taseer, has become a critic of the blasphemy law, saying it is is often abused.

Asia Bibi, the Christian woman who Taseer sought to defend against charges of blasphemy, faces the death penalty - accused by women in her village of blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed.

Bibi protested her innocence in November.

“They [neighbors] filed fake charges against me,” she said. “In the past I have had conflicts with them due to a sewerage issue. They stole my goat.”

Shehrbano Taseer, the governor’s daughter, is on a speaking tour of the United States to discuss the issues surrounding the case. She says blasphemy laws are easily twisted to victimize Christians, Hindus and even Muslims, to serve the self-interest of the accusers.

“The ground reality is that they are mostly used as an instrument of oppression and terror. Anyone can level a blasphemy charge against anyone,” explained Taseer. “You know, it’s mostly due because of personal vendettas or land disputes.”

In the case of Asia Bibi, local clerics reportedly took the accusations against her at face value. One of them, Maqsood Ahmed Masoomi, insists that courts are not necessary to punish blasphemy.

“We are saying that anybody in this world who says anything blasphemous against the Holy Prophet has to be killed, and anyone who hears it [blasphemous words], should kill him on the spot. This is our belief,” the cleric said.

Taseer says Pakistani leaders fail to adequately pursue cases against those who abuse the blasphemy laws - partly because they fear being killed by extremists.

“This is not just this government, but previous governments have a tendency to appease these religious extremists, and there needs to be a no-holds-barred policy,” Taseer said. “They need precedents to be set to ensure that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated by the state.”

Taseer warns that in Pakistan, knives are being turned inward - by people who take the law into their own hands, hiding behind religion to pursue selfish ends. She says her father’s murder should serve as an occasion for the people of Pakistan to consider whether this is the kind of country they want.

URL: http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Some-Say-Pakistans...469.html

Extremist Intimidation Chills Pakistan Secular Society

Extremist Intimidation Chills Pakistan Secular Society

by Julie McCarthy

 Listen to the Story or Download. 07:46

Pakistani police guards carry the coffin of the assassinated governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, during the funeral procession in Lahore on Jan. 5. - Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images

January 24, 2011

In Pakistan, a battle has been joined by those who want a tolerant Islamic state against those who want a fundamentalist religious regime.

The killing in Pakistan earlier this month of Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer has cheered the religious right while chilling secular Pakistanis and exposing deep fissures in the society.

The governor was gunned down in Islamabad by a bodyguard angered at his bid to relax the country’s blasphemy laws. The assassination of Taseer, an audacious advocate for modernism, revealed the conservative attitudes about Islam that are sweeping through Pakistan.

A Growing Rift

A growing and dangerous dichotomy is evident in the Old City of Lahore that teems with shop owners and vendors. Outdoor stalls sit cheek by jowl in the city of 6 million.

In the aftermath of the governor’s killing, Zafar Iqbol, 65, who owns a fabric shop in the Mehood Cloth Market, says he “fears for the future.”

“We feel utterly helpless,” he says. “The market here is under the dominion of elements who have affiliations with religious parties. They come along and they insist that we shut things down, and of course we’re afraid not to, so we do close things down and we lose our business.”

A few of the men who run the market traders association hoist themselves onto the counter of Iqbol’s stall and lean in to listen, causing the owner obvious discomfort.

Members of the Association to Protect the Dignity of the Holy Prophet, or Tahafuz-e-Namwoos Risalat, join the Sunni Itehad Council in a protest march to denounce the Pope. The Vatican called for the abolition of Pakistan's blasphemy laws after a Christian woman accused of blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad was sentenced to death. - Julie McCarthy/NPR

While Iqbol mourns the loss of the governor, his unannounced visitors feel anything but sorrow. Mohammad Ilyas, the vice president of the traders association, says the slain governor maligned Islam when he said Pakistan’s strict laws on blasphemy had become a tool to oppress religious minorities.

“It was totally wrong on the part of the governor to say that the blasphemy laws of Pakistan should be changed. The governor not only criticized the law of the land, but he went out of his way to protect Asia Bibi,” a Christian woman who was sentenced to death last year on the charge of blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad.

When asked whether Taseer deserved to die, Ilyas, 65, says, “Definitely, because he interfered with the religion of this country. If he hadn’t interfered, he would not have been killed.”

Making An Assassin A Hero

Banners draped in the streets of the Punjab capital, Lahore, call the governor’s confessed killer, Mumtaz Qadri, a hero. The 23-year-old police commando assigned to guard the governor said Taseer was an apostate for opposing Pakistan’s blasphemy law.

Evidence that fundamentalism is becoming mainstream was found in the young lawyers who showered the assassin with rose petals as he entered court in Islamabad one day after the shooting. It signaled that religious fundamentalism was not the purview of the poor Pakistani masses but reaches far into the educated class as well.

Demonstrations saluting Qadri have continued throughout the country, a disturbing signal for Washington, which is hoping for greater stability from its nuclear armed ally.

Supreme Court Bar Association President Asma Jahangir says each time democracy begins to take hold in Pakistan, the extreme right wages an offensive that is more lethal than the one before.

“And there is a reason behind it. They do not want a democratic dispensation here. It doesn’t suit them. They don’t figure in there. They get marginalized there. So the murder of the governor was a part of that larger plan as well,” she says.

Parliamentarian Sherry Rehman also is facing death threats for proposing amendments to the blasphemy law, as had the governor. Rehman says “sane” voices have been silenced.

Historian Mubarak Ali estimates that the religious right now makes up some 30 percent of Pakistani society and says radical clerics have been emboldened by the mainstream parties, including President Asif Ali Zardari's Pakistan Peoples Party. - Julie McCarthy/NPR

“And none of them are seeking to offend sensibilities of any religion, let alone Muslims themselves,” she says.

Rehman’s Pakistan Peoples Party, the party of President Asif Ali Zardari, has disowned any reform of the blasphemy laws and has been conspicuously quiet amid the uproar. Historian Mubarak Ali says all of the mainstream parties have emboldened the religious right by kowtowing to the radical clerics who are roiling the streets.

“Instead of fighting, instead of challenging — they just surrendered,” he says. “And now these clerics, they are so powerful, they are so bold, that now they are threatening everybody.”

‘No Other Alternative’

Farid Piracha, the deputy secretary general of Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s largest religious party, says “if there [were] justice in Pakistan,” there would be no eruptions on the streets.

The party’s Islamic revivalist message has pushed Pakistan toward conservatism while preaching the dangers of a perceived U.S. war on Islam.

The radical right is gathering strength in Pakistan conflating religious dogma with the policies of the United States. Piracha says they cannot be separated.

“There is damage of more than 30,000 innocent people during the so-called war against terrorism. So, one cannot believe that America is not against Islam. America’s total military actions are against the Muslim states,” he says.

U.S. drone attacks and the war in Afghanistan have provoked a popular outcry among Pakistanis, which radical Islamists exploit. Historian Ali says extremists have expanded their constituency by emerging as the only alternative voice in a country where millions feel under threat by everything from the faltering economy to the lack of security.

“They say that dictatorships didn’t give them anything. Democracy didn’t give them anything,” he says. “So, they are exhorted that Islam is going to solve their problems, give them dignity in the society and rule of law. Because there is no other alternative, they believed it.”

The extremists also benefit from the legacy of Zia al Haq, the 1980s dictator who undertook the Islamization of the schools that indoctrinated a generation in religious orthodoxy.

“As a result of this education,” Ali says, “they have very closed minds.”

Speaking Out

As religious passions stifle liberal voices, one group refuses to be repressed — the Ajoka Theater.

Ajoka Theater founder Madeeha Guahar on stage following a performance in Islamabad of a play about blasphemy. In the antisecular atmosphere following the Punjab governor’s assassination, the staging of the play is a rare example of secular society standing up against the intimidation of religious extremists. - Julie McCarthy/NPR

It’s been in the forefront of the struggle for a secular democratic Pakistan. This past week, it staged a disturbing production about blasphemy and dedicated it to the slain governor.

It’s a study in brutality, with white-robed clerics in league with black-clad followers haranguing their victims as they hang them.

“That this play was shown in Islamabad is an act of courage,” says audience member Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physicist and essayist. “This is a country that stands at the very verge of religious fascism.”

Hoodbhoy says he fears for the theater company.

“I don’t know when they might be targeted,” he says.

The theater founder and director of the play, Madeeha Guahar, says Ajoka will continue performing and take the risk.

Copyright 2011 NPR
URL: www.npr.org/2011/01/24/...secular-society

26 shots that sent Pakistan over the edge

washingtonpost.com > Print Edition > Sunday Outlook

26 shots that sent Pakistan over the edge

Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, January 23, 2011

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN has reported from South Asia for more than a decade

At a fashionable plaza in this serene Pakistani capital, a few dozen people gather in the evenings at the spot where provincial governor Salman Taseer was gunned down on Jan. 4. More than the man, their candlelight vigils mourn the open debate and religious compassion that have been lost with the assassination of the outspoken liberal politician.

Fifteen miles away, in a working-class alley of Rawalpindi, thousands of people flock each day to the home of Mumtaz Qadri, the elite police guard who killed Taseer. Qadri is in jail now, but the site has become a shrine to what many Pakistanis see as his heroic act against a blasphemer who insulted their prophet. Someone has even put up posters of Qadri riding a white horse to heaven.

In the days since Taseer’s death, Pakistan has become a different country. The veneer of Western democracy has been ripped away, the liberal elite has been cowed into silence, and the civilian government has beaten a hasty retreat from morality, authority and law. Islamic extremist groups, once dismissed as unable to win more than a few seats in Parliament, are filling the streets, with bearded acolytes waving flags and chanting like giddy crowds at a post-game victory rally.

Suddenly, a crucial U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism seems incapable of stopping a tide of intolerant and violent Islam at home - raising doubts about Pakistan’s ability to play a constructive role in the war against the Taliban or to help the United States extricate its forces from Afghanistan, Pakistan’s northern neighbor.

Qadri, who happily confessed to murdering the politician he was assigned to protect, has little chance of being convicted. Instead of suffering ostracism, he was greeted with handshakes and garlands by courthouse lawyers, who offered to defend him pro bono. The provincial court system, notorious for freeing radical Islamic leaders, is unlikely to condemn a national religious hero.

“There is no justice in our country for the common man, but Qadri’s act against a blasphemer has made all Muslims feel stronger,” a shopkeeper in Rawalpindi told me. “They can punish him, but what will they do with a million Qadris who have been born now?”

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani, whose ruling coalition recently recovered from near-collapse, has reassured the restive Muslim masses that not a word of Pakistan’s blasphemy law will be changed. One of the harshest such statutes in the Muslim world, it makes any purported slur against the prophet Muhammad - even a misinterpreted remark or a discarded Koran - grounds for execution.

Taseer had proposed softening the law. Another legislator who did the same has received death threats. The police, whose ranks produced the killer, seem duped or complicit. The army, caught between fighting the Taliban and courting public opinion, has remained prudently silent.

Pakistani commentators have expressed shock at the public lionization of Qadri and the demonization of Taseer, who did nothing worse than criticize the blasphemy law and commiserate with a Christian peasant woman who was sentenced to death under it. The atmosphere is so charged now that most clerics refused to officiate at Taseer’s funeral, and the Christian woman’s prison warden said he may not be able to protect her even from the guards.

For the past several years, a few voices have warned against the growth of religious hatred in Pakistan. Columnist Kamila Hyat described a “Talibanization of minds” creeping across the country, emboldening extremist groups and censoring debate. Physicist and activist Pervez Hoodbhuy decried the quashing of critical thought in Pakistani schools and the rote Koranic learning that shapes many young minds.

But in Friday sermons and at many levels of Pakistani society, one hears warnings about creeping Westernization, secular culture and forceful aggression against Islam by America and its allies. When Pope Benedict XVI called for a repeal of Pakistan’s blasphemy law this month, some Muslim clerics decried it as part of the foreign conspiracy and said the pope was inviting attacks on minority Christians in Pakistan.

Some observers here say it is unfair to tar millions of Pakistani Muslims as extremists just because they feel strongly enough about the sacred nature of the prophet Muhammad to justify killing someone who insults him. What is needed, they say, is stronger national leaders who will uphold the laws - against blasphemy and murder alike. “This is an Islamic republic, and people feel very strongly about the blasphemy issue,” said Hamid Mir, a leading television journalist here. “We have to respect that, but we also have to respect the law and the constitution, or we will be lost.”

Others argue that a mind-set that finds spiritual justification for shooting a government official 26 times will also accept the public flogging of drunks, the beheading of policemen and the stoning of unmarried lovers - all hallmarks of the Taliban forces that swept through Pakistan’s scenic Swat Valley two years ago.

Pakistan’s army, a close partner of the U.S. military, ultimately drove the Taliban out of Swat after cementing public opinion in its favor. Now Washington is prodding army leaders here to extend their campaign to other insurgent-infested tribal areas.

But public opinion in Pakistan today is not what it was a year ago, and no one wants to risk igniting popular wrath. Not the nuclear-armed security establishment, which still sees Islamic militants as a useful tool to harass arch-rival India. Not the weak, unpopular government, saddled by a secular past and still reeling from the slaying of its most charismatic leader, Benazir Bhutto, three years ago.

In recent days I have listened to Islamic activists rant about the sanctity of the prophet and the evil of those who offend him or dare to question any tents of Islam. They even have a label for such dangerous subversives, which translates roughly as “ought to be killed.”

But there is one conversation that haunts me in particular, an encounter I had with a young man on a flight between Islamabad and Karachi. He was neatly dressed and beardless, a recent science graduate on his way to a job interview. As I read through the morning papers and discarded them on the floor, I noticed him squirming.

“Madam, could you please pick up the papers?” he finally said. “The name of our prophet is on the front page, and it must not be on the ground.”

I complied, and we spoke cordially about our respective religions. But when I asked about Taseer’s murder, his tone changed. “They say he blasphemed against our prophet,” the young man said solemnly. “If this is true, then it would be my duty as a Muslim to kill him, too.”

Pamela Constable, a Washington Post foreign correspondent, is the author of the forthcoming “Playing With Fire: Why Pakistan’s Democracy Is Losing Ground to Islamic Extremists.”

©2011 The Washington Post Company
URL: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/.../AR2011012300278.html

Blasphemy allegations: Another Christian family on the run

Pakistan Punjab

Blasphemy allegations: Another Christian family on the run

Rana TanveerRana Tanveer
June 07, 2010

Supporters of one of several Namoos-i-Risalat groups, Shahab Islami Pakistan chant slogans and wave flags during a rally to support the assassin of Salmaan Taseer in Rawalpindi. PHOTO: AFP

LAHORE: Two Christian women were beaten and publically humiliated by an angry mob over apparently frivolous blasphemy allegations and they and their family are now in hiding for fear of being killed, The Express Tribune has learnt.

“None of our relatives is ready to let us stay with them. They fear the wrath of the extremists, particularly after the assassination of Salmaan Taseer,” a male member of the family said over the phone from an undisclosed location.

The family and a non-governmental organisation that is helping them asked that their identities not be revealed, lest it put them in further danger. The names mentioned here are fictitious.

According to the family, the allegations stem from a dispute between Amina, a Muslim, and her sister-in-law Zahira, a Christian, in an East Lahore locality. The two got into an argument on Tuesday night and though it appeared to have been settled, on Wednesday morning, after her husband Zahid had gone to work, Amina walked out onto the street and started shouting that Zahira had abused the Holy Prophet (pbuh).

A short while later, a group of men led by Muhammad Sameer, a member of a religious organisation keen on raising its sectarian profile, forced their way into the house and started slapping Zahira, said another of her brothers, Sohail. “Other men and women from the neighbourhood started gathering at the house too and they beat up my sister and mother. They were the only people in the house,” he said.

“We tried our best to get her to confess her crime,” Sameer told The Express Tribune. As a member of the religious organisation, he said he could not tolerate any derogatory remarks about the Holy Prophet (pbuh).

Sameer added that he was very proud of his wife’s performance during the mob beating. “She beat Zahira more than anyone else. Her hand is so swollen that she hasn’t been able to make rotis since the day of the incident. I’ve been getting my meals from a restaurant,” he said.

Malik Mumtaz Qadri, the self-confessed assassin of Salmaan Taseer, is a member of the same group as Sameer. The group also runs a twenty-four hour cable TV channel.

Khadim Hazoor, Sameer’s son-in-law and another participant in the beating, said that the women’s faces were blackened and they were made to wear necklaces of shoes and paraded around the locality on donkeys to humiliate them. He said the women denied blaspheming and repeatedly touched their feet seeking mercy.

He said the people of the locality would not allow Zahid or his family to return to their house, which he lives next door to. He claimed that the fight between Zahira and Amina the night before the incident revolved around the upbringing of Zahid and Amina’s 18-month-old daughter. Amina had wanted to raise her daughter as a Muslim, but Zahira wanted her niece to be raised as a Christian, he said.

Hazoor accused Zahid of “cheating Islam” by pretending to convert from Christianity to Islam so he could marry the Muslim girl. “We will not let them live in this house. He has not only cheated Amina but also Islam,” he said.

Zameer Khan, an NGO worker, helped the family flee the locality after they were attacked. “Apparently there was no blasphemy, just an argument between two women,” he said.

He said after hearing of the incident, he had reached the scene to find the women being attacked. He said he had asked the mob if anyone had heard Zahira utter any blasphemous remarks, to which they all replied in the negative. He said he persuaded them to let the women go while he investigated the matter. He then helped relocate the family temporarily. He said he had also convinced the mob not to involve the police.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 15th, 2011.

URL: http://tribune.com.pk/story/103891/blasphemy...run/

Taseer murder: Sunni Ittehad warns against protests

PAKISTAN Punjab

Taseer murder: Sunni Ittehad warns against protests

Rana Tanveer
January 10, 2010

Children protesting in front of Lahore Press Club against any change in blasphemy law. PHOTO: RIAZ AHMAD/ EXPRESS

LAHORE: A Tahaffuz Namoos-i-Risalat conference held in the city on Sunday warned against public rallies and demonstrations praising Governor Salmaan Taseer or protesting his killing. A Mumtaz Qadri, speakers threatened, would be at every corner of the country to stop such displays of solidarity, a reference to the police guard who has confessed to killing the governor.

Maulana Nawaz Kharal, a spokesperson for the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), led the chorus while addressing the conference held at Aiwan-i-Iqbal. Kharal also said there should be no protest against Qadri and added, “Don’t associate Mumtaz with any terrorist group. He is a true lover of the Holy Prophet (pbuh).” He said his Sunni followers protect Qadri and his family with their lives.

SIC chairman Fazle Karim too condemned protests in favour of Salmaan Taseer. Karim said the NGOs protesting the governors’ death had never held any protest against the killings at Sunni gatherings after the attacks at Jamia Naeemia, Nishtar Park in Karachi, Data Darbar, shrines of Abdullah Shah Ghazi and Farid Ganj Shakar. He said they had not even raised a voice against the ban on the veil imposed in France. He said his followers would continue “the mission of Ghazi Ilamudin Shaheed.” He said the Sunni Tehrik would provide legal assistance to Qadri.

Dr Muhammad Ashraf Asif Jalali, founder of Idara Sirat-i-Mustaqeem Pakistan, announced the Ghazi Ilmudin Award for Qadri. He said that his group would lay a wreath on Ilmudin’s grave on Qadri’s behalf on January 15. He also said that it would hold a rally on January 19 from Lahore to Qadri’s residence in Rawalpindi.

Jalali then demanded that the government release Qadri as soon as possible and exonerate him from the charge of murder. He said the punishment for a blasphemer against the Holy Prophet (pbuh) was death. He claimed that the inclusion of Section 295-C in the Pakistan Penal Code had brought good luck for the country. He went on to say that all participants in Taseer’s funeral had jeopardised their Islamic faith. He said their participation in the prayers had put a question mark on their commitment to the community of the faithful.

The participants of the conference included Justice (retd) Nazeer Akhtar, former judge Nazeer Ghazi, Pir Sayed Karamat Ali and Dr Raghib Naeemi. After the conference ended, a group of SIC activists headed to the Governor’s House gate on The Mall on a van and chanted slogans in support of Qadri.Earlier, nearly 300 Sunni Tehrik activists had held a protest rally in front of the Lahore Press Club demanding Qadri’s immediate release. Participants of the rally also chanted slogans against the protestors in favour of Taseer.

In the only civil society rally after Taseer’s assassination on January 4, the participants had condemned the murder which they said was a result of religious extremism.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 10th, 2011.

URL: http://tribune.com.pk/story/101580/taseer...against-protests/

Hardline Stance: Religious bloc condones murder

PAKISTAN

Hardline Stance: Religious bloc condones murder

Salman Siddiqui
January 5, 2011

Arrested Qadri sits in a police van at the site of a fatal attack on Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab, by his bodyguard in Islamabad on January 4, 2011. PHOTO: AFP

KARACHI: More than 500 religious scholars belonging to the Barelvi school of thought paid rich tributes to the assassin of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer on Tuesday and urged ‘Muslims across the country’ to boycott the funeral ceremony.

While the Deoband and Barelvi leaders appear to be on the same page when it comes to condemning the slain Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader for terming the blasphemy law as a black law, the Barelvi scholars, who claim to be the ‘true lovers of the Holy Prophet (pbuh)’, have taken a more hardline stance.

The largest body of the Barelvi group, the Jamaate Ahle Sunnat Pakistan (JASP), whose directions are considered binding on every other organisation that follows the same school of thought, issued a statement saying that “No Muslim should attend the funeral or even try to pray for Salmaan Taseer or even express any kind of regret or sympathy over the incident.”

The statement which has been endorsed by senior Barelvi leaders such as Professor Saeed Shah Kazmi, Allama Syed Riaz Hussain Shah, Syed Shah Turabul Haq Qadri and Hajji Mohammad Tayyab calls the assassin Mumtaz Hussain Qadri ‘Ashiqe Rasool Ghaziye Mulk (Lover of the Prophet, Commander of the Country)’.

“We pay rich tributes and salute the bravery, valour and faith of Mumtaz Qadri,” the statement said, adding that the ministers, politicians, ‘so-called’ intellectuals and anchor persons should learn lessons from the governor’s death. The scholars said that those who insult the Holy Prophet (pbuh), even if they did not intend to, were liable for death.

Hajji Mohammad Tayyab, who is also the secretary general of the Sunni Ittehad Council, told The Express Tribune that scholars had “repeatedly urged the president, prime minister and Governor Taseer himself that if their knowledge about the blasphemy law are limited, they should consult them and avoid debating over the issue as it would inflame the people and then anything could happen.”

Shah Turabul Haq Qadri’s son Siraj, also a senior member of the JASP, endorsed the statement and said it was now binding on every Muslim.

Jamiat Ulemae Pakistan (JUP) central executive committee member Maulana Shabbir went as far as saying that in his opinion Salmaan Taseer was ‘Wajubul Qatil’ (must be killed according to divine law). “He had called the divine law of God, a black law and tried to protect a condemned blasphemer,” he said.

Senior Sunni Tehrik leader Shahid Ghauri said although his party was yet to issue any formal statement about the matter, he would support the call of JASP because the people who gave the edict were his elders.

Senior Jamaate Islami leader Farid Paracha distanced his organisation from the JASP statement, but condemned the governor for calling the blasphemy law, a black law. “I believe that this call for changing the law was being done at the behest of the US and other western powers.”

Senior cleric of the Deoband school of thought and Jamia Binoria chief Mufti Naeem said he could not understand why the slain PPP leader invited trouble for himself, especially given that the blasphemy law was passed in 1985 by the parliament unanimously. “He kept on taking Aasia’s name, but I ask why didn’t he ever make a similar plea for Aafia (Siddiqui).” Naeem said although Islam says that anyone who commits blasphemy is liable to death punishment, what the killer Mumtaz Qadri did was totally wrong as he took the law into his hand.

“The blasphemy law was made exactly to prevent such incidents. Else there will be chaos in the country and everyone would kill everyone,” he said. Maulana Asad Thanvi too supported Naeem’s stance and said although what governor Taseer did was condemnable in the strongest words, he should have been tried in the courts.

Allama Abbas Kumaili of the Shia school of thought said the blasphemy law can be misused and there was no doubt about it. “But the way Salmaan Taseer took up the matter was blunt which inflamed the more emotional and ignorant people of our country.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 5th, 2011

URL: http://tribune.com.pk/story/99313/hardline-stance-religious-bloc-condones-murder/