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Protests against blasphemy are a common sight in Pakistan. Credit: AAMIR QURESHI/AFP via Getty Images
A few weeks ago, a Sri Lankan factory worker was lynched by a mob in Sialkot, a city in Pakistan, before his corpse was left to burn in the street. He had been accused of blasphemy for removing posters that bore prayers eulogising Muhammad. Hundreds gathered to participate in the barbarity, while the local authorities stood by. Videos of the man’s body being torched circulated widely on social media.
This was Pakistan’s third blasphemy-related incident in just seven days. Earlier that week, a mob had set fire to a police station after it refused to hand over a man accused of desecrating the Quran. A couple of days earlier, four men were arrested for asking the local mosque to make a funeral announcement for a Christian.
Pakistan is only one of 12 Muslim-majority countries to carry the death penalty for blasphemy; 20 others implement harsh prison sentences. And blasphemy laws are frequently cited. Over the past fortnight, they have been used to censor schoolbooks in Northern Syria, curb digital freedom in Indonesia, send a Saudi man to death row over a tweet, and sentence renowned Egyptian lawyer and thinker Ahmed Abdo Maher to five years in prison.
It is in Pakistan, though, where the crime of blasphemy is most ferociously punished. But not through the courts. Pakistan likes to call itself a “democratic republic”, and therefore shies away from actually judicially executing anyone for sacrilege — unlike, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia. But the state has been known to turn a blind eye to Islamist mobs meting out vigilante justice. Many of the perpetrators actually argue that it is the state’s “failure to hang blasphemers” which means punishment has to be carried out extrajudicially. This claim was echoed in the aftermath of the Sialkot killing by the leader of the Islamist party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F), who said: “If the state won’t punish those who insult the prophet then such incidents will happen.”
The Islamist mobs are now so emboldened that they will freely target not only religious minorities, but also dissenting Muslims — the “wrong” kind of Muslims — even if they practise and believe in Islam. They have burned down Christian homes, vandalised Hindu temples and destroyed “sacrilegious” mosques belonging to the Ahmadiyya Muslim sect; they have lynched university students, 10-year-olds and even those who had memorised the Quran by heart.
The vigilantes gain their strength from two contrasting, but similarly morally corrupt, sources.
The first, of course, is the Pakistani state itself. The military, who are the de facto rulers of the country, prop up radical Islamist outfits as assets. These range from militia, which might give the state strategic influence in a neighbouring nations, to Islamist pressure groups, which would keep civilian leaders in check if the army’s stooges felt like staging a coup. Groups like the JUI-F could easily mobilise madrassa students against any authority figures by accusing them of working against Islam.
The current Prime Minister, Imran Khan, is really just a puppet, maintaining the democratic façade of this military-ruled realm. He described the Sialkot lynching as a “day of shame” for Pakistan. But he also sends unhelpfully mixed messages about the radical Islamists Tehrik-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), whose slogans the lynch mob were chanting.
The TLP has a powerful hold on the state, which it manipulates through orchestrated street violence. It was formally banned in April for its sustained violent action over the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. But then, in November, after weeks of violence in which four police officers were killed, and dozens of civilians injured, the TLP was removed from the terror list and 2,000 detained members were released. I’m sure Khan’s motivation is partly ideological; back in April, he was reassuring the group that they “shared the same goals”: to eradicate blasphemy against Islam. But I’m sure, too, that the two million Islamist votes that the TLP mustered in the 2018 elections had something to do with it.
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SubscribeCourageous commentary from a journalist based in Pakistan.
My thoughts exactly.
Unbelievably, we still send these people Foreign Aid.
I’ve always wondered what exactly a “progressive” is. It seems to be a rather elitist or condescending self description by a certain kind of leftist. Is the suggestion that leftist positions are naturally better or morally superior positions to those of liberals and conservatives?
“Is the suggestion that leftist positions are naturally better or morally superior positions to those of liberals and conservatives?”
Yes. Yet no leftist can offer an explanation as to why moral codes devised by atheists or anarchists are binding on anyone else. The argument seems to be one from an unacknowledged definition of ‘true natures’.
A “progressive” has a special meaning on UnHerd. It is the educated version of f**k*r.
That term annoys me too. It’s Gramscian linguistic capture.
Whenever I read
“Progressive”I immediately put a line through the word and replace it with “Regressive” in my head.A “regressive”
Terrible article! Libel against Pakistan, that resolute friend of the West, who greatly assisted in the war on terrorism, and is a staunch advocate of equality, civil rights, rule of law and other fundamental tenets of the West. Pakistan does not have the death penalty, corruption, discrimination against women, and is a great friend, partner and ally in every way–a vibrant and stable state under civilian leadership in a very tough neighborhood! Shame on the author!
Oops. My bad. I was thinking of Sweden.
excellent and interesting article
Preposterous article. If you want to do an expose on Pakistan there are 1000 better stories to get into, big ones on the world stage. What they are into with India, Kashmir, Punjab, Afghanistan, China, USA, is crazy stuff – this sort of event is nothing which can be addressed – WTF? He wants the West to send some nasty letter to the people of Pakistan telling them to stop that?
@Dear People of Pakistan, please stop oppressing Blasphemers.
Thankyou.
Signed, President Biden and VP K Harris.
I don’t think that’s fair, President Brandon isn’t mentioned in the article. it’s an appeal to moderate Muslims in the west to visibly and loudly disavow and disassociate from community that support or condone violence done in the name of Islam,. They can do so safely because they are protected by our western laws and tolerant societies, the author has written this from inside Pakistan, so has taken a risk even writing this.
Your comment is pure whataboutery.
Pointless comment that demeans you.
I am likely the only poster here who respects Islam. Naturally I do not like finatics, but I do not think it is the role of British Muslims to use the Union Jack to protest behind – protesting street incidents in another country.
You are all a bunch of ignorant sheep – on both Islam and Christianity, and on foreign lands and people, Baaaa
(but thanks for the -28, I wear those kinds of numbers much more proudly than positive ones – as it must mean I made some valid point to get such a spluttering negative response)
I think you get negative marks because of how you say what you say. I don’t often agree with your perspective, but you bring things to the table that should be discussed. Just better than you do it.
Arguably, you write with anger because of the reaction you get, so vicious circle.
Your point that the conduct of Pakistan should give people genuine cause for concern across a panoply of issues is entirely correct. It is also, in this context, a “what about” argument.
I often denigrate virtue signallers by saying they should plant their “Pride” flag on the American embassy in Riyadh rather than the Vatican if they want to signal real virtue. That would take courage. That would show virtue.
What a Pakistani journalist has done here is just that: he has taken a brave stand to say what is wrong.
Islam is a faith that has not even evolved into the Western 9th Century. Any nobility and decency within it (of which there is much of both) is obscured by the hateful practices. In this regard, a very good friend of mine from Pakistan points at Saudi Arabia (my birth place) and says that Saudi Whabbism with its raw hatred for all that is not male and not Whabbist Muslim has been pumped into every Madrasah in Pakistan, Indonesia and throughout Africa.
Pakistan has become Saudi’s tool – it is Pakistani troops in Saudi uniforms in Yemen.
So yes, there are massive issues that we should have regard to involving Pakistan, but the populism of hatred that Whabbist Islam teaches is no less a story.
See Ilhan Omar in the US Congress for a prime example of what this author writes. Or Galeti Tavas in the comments.
I really, fervently hope for your own sake that you aren’t actually based in Lahore, because otherwise we are soon going to look for a new correspondent
The one great thing about these Islamic states being so extreme is that we know their intolerance means they can never gain superiority over the west.
The second great thing is when they try to convince everyone about the superiority of Islam as a religion, when they’re still interpreting it by medieval standards. Intelligent Muslims must despair, but if they do need to believe in magical thinking, hopefully they’ll adopt a religion that isn’t a death cult.
Then why dont intelligent muslims do more – or leave the lunacy……..
Because the penalty is death.
Thankyou for your clear and brave expose – however it is probably time to move your location lest ……….You can still do good work offshore and would fit refugee immigration status.
The people of the West don’t enable it, we don’t like it at all
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”. -Napoleon Bonaparte. So I say let them have at it. And yes, they are certainly our enemies and yes, savagery is a mistake (at least in the long term.)
So critiquing Islam in the West incurs the same social and institutional wrath as merely hinting, even obliquely, that wokeism might indicate a totalitarian impulse.
“As a result, while Islam remains the only religion that still promotes punishment by death, progressive voices don’t seem particularly interested in preventing that practice in the Muslim world.”
They are Islamic States, they have their own laws, their own government, history Culture. They may do what their own laws say, which you may not like, but their laws go back many centuries and are the cornerstone of their society.
Religious fanatic vigilantes commit atrocities there, but that is the matter of their police and courts.
Why do you not go about lamenting the Mexico and Central America’s Cartel’s torturing, killing, oppressing, and destroying millions? That is against humanity – and against the Rule of Law entirely.
“This should start with the West’s self-avowed moderate Muslims, who should take a clear and unequivocal stance that prioritises humanity over their religion. For if they cannot muster the moral courage to say that no one should be killed for blasphemy regardless of what Islam says, or doesn’t say, they might as well stand with the Sialkot mob.”
Now that is total BS!!!! I have never heard a more preposterous statement! You are NOT the moral police, to go about declaring other’s wrong’s – And if you do not – then you are equally guilty of their crime as they are? This is crazy. They are their Sovereign Land, People and Religion.
P.S. tell us what we need to do about Afghanistan next – is it time to go back and set them straight again?
Agree with you but… in the UK people like to believe that there are Good Muslims and Bad Muslims and we are xenaphobic about criticising the religion for sake of the Good Muslims.
Rowan Williams, leader of the Church of England, is a writer and a fool. He is an idiot and a total waste of space and should be sacked. Why do I still feel safe when I say this? Why am I not cowering in my house waiting for a mob to attack me?
MINUS 35!!!
Thanks Chris, this is one of the posts I am most proud of, to get such a rabble that fired up…..
bunch of silly rabbits……
Um – Rowan Williams retired from that position a long time ago. The current Archbish. is Justin Welby – but you can just slide the descriptions straight over to him, and find many Anglicans nodding along. Don’t worry; no lynching will follow.
Shows how important the job really is. Thanks for your correction.
They’re sovereign and how they wish to run their country is up to them, that much I agree with. However if they decide to run that country in what I’d regard as a backward manner, then I’m free to criticise them for doing so
Yes, as long as you realise that your criticism is personal, only for you, a way of showing some intellectual suoeriority. Your criticism doesn’t actually achieve anything.
I think some posters here fail to appreciate just how much the attitudes imbibed in Pakistan and other nominally democratic Muslim countries bleed into the beliefs and expectations of Muslims in Western countries through immigration, family connection and frequent trips between the two ‘worlds’. It’s that porosity that gives Western Muslims and non-Muslims the right to say ‘this affects us, and we will call it out.’ The writer is right to suggest that it must become more than a right, but a duty – but I don’t think he’s right to say the objections must come initially from Western Muslims. It needs to be taken up by all who benefit from, or engage in, connections between the West and Islamist countries, at all levels.
Fully understand that, hence the desire to deport them. Which nation did the rapist of Rochester come from?
True. This is why we should actually do something:
Cease trading with these countries
Stop selling them arms
Stop permitting their citizens to travel to the West
De-nationalise and return any in our country that commits a crime linked to their backward faith.
Deport entire families of one of them commits an act of Islamic terror.
Here is what we should not do:
Anything whatsoever to takes sides with any faction in their countries.
Send troops to the Middle East
Buy hydrocarbons from Arab nations
In short, the West needs to start treating these nations as the untouchables. Don’t trade with them. Don’t involve ourselves with them. Let them do whatever they like to one another, it is none of our business.
Fat chance of any of that.
“Why do you not go about lamenting the Mexico and Central America’s Cartel’s torturing, killing, oppressing, and destroying millions? That is against humanity – and against the Rule of Law entirely.”
You can criticise both.
And they are not the same thing
You have cartel like violence in Pakistan as well.
You don’t have Christian blasphemy laws, forced conversions, religious terror attacks in Mexico.
“You are NOT the moral police, to go about declaring other’s wrong’s”
Then ask muslims staying in UK or France to stop shrieking about Israel or Kashmir or someone drawing a cartoon in Denmark.
Deal?
Judao-Christian laws are much older & have adapted to the century they live in, Islam is stuck in the century it was invented in!
I am interested to know in which ways Judao-Christian laws have adapted since the Bible is the main basis for both with the principles of the New Testament superseding the ritual and ceremonial laws of the Hebrew Scriptures.
I don’t care what Islamist states do – I just don’t want them, or their adherents, anywhere near the West. I’d happily let them all blow each other up and never put our soldiers in harm’s way trying to civilise them.