Dawn – Cleric sentenced to death in blasphemy case

Nabeel Anwar Dhakku

Chakwal, 31 January 2012. A ‘blasphemy’ accused was sentenced to death and also to 10 years’ imprisonment on Monday, sources told Dawn.

Soofi Mohammad Ishaq of Talagang town had been facing the charge since 2009.

On Monday, an Additional Sessions Judge of Jhelum sentenced him to death and 10 years’ imprisonment and fined him Rs200,000.

Soofi Mohammad Ishaq was settled in United States where he worked as a cleric. He returned to Talagang in 2009 and was given a warm welcome by hundreds of his disciples. His followers also kissed his feet, but some people objected to the act of “bowing down before Ishaq” and later accused his followers of branding him a prophet.

Later, Ishaq’s rivals launched a campaign against him and a young man named Asadullah, allegedly at the behest of his Deobandi mentors, lodged a complaint at the Talagang police station. He accused Ishaq of committing blasphemy.

Police booked Ishaq under sections 295A and 295C of the Pakistan Penal Code and his case was heard by Chakwal’s Additional Sessions Judge Sajid Awan.

After completion of hearing, the judge set a date for announcing the judgment, but later he wrote a letter to the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench, informing it that he could not announce the verdict because of security risks. “Judge Sajid Awan pleaded to the LHC that as he is deputed in Chakwal, he cannot announce the verdict because of security risks and, therefore, the case should be referred to another district,” said Advocate Chaudhry Mehmood Akhtar, the counsel of the accused.

The LHC referred the case to Jhelum’s district and sessions judge, who marked the case to his subordinate Additional Sessions Judge Chaudhry Mumtaz Hussain, who announced the verdict on Friday.

Informed sources told Dawn that Soofi Ishaq had been appointed Gaddi Nasheen of the shrine of Pir Fazal Shah. This, according to sources, infuriated complainant Asadullah, who belonged to Pir Fazal Shah’s family, and he used the opportunity to register the blasphemy case against Ishaq.

“My client pleaded to the court that he cannot even think of committing blasphemy.” He told the court that he believed that the holy prophet (peace be upon him) was the last Messnger of Allah,” Advocate Chaudhry Akhtar Mehmood said.

When contacted by Dawn, Asadullah claimed to have seen followers of Ishaq bowing their heads before him and heard them chanting slogans of “Yaa Rasool Allah”. When asked why other religious leaders did not move against Ishaq, he said: “I was the first to see the way Ishaq’s followers behaved and I recorded it on my camera. And Allah has given me the courage to move against the blasphemer.”

http://www.dawn.com/2012/01/31/cleric-sentenced-to-death-in-blasphemy-case.html

BBC News – Pakistan judge Pervez Ali Shah ‘flees death threats’

25 October 2011

A Pakistani judge who convicted a Muslim extremist of murder has fled to Saudi Arabia after getting death threats, his colleagues say.

Pervez Ali Shah gave the death sentence to Malik Mumtaz Hussein Qadri for killing Punjab Governor Salman Taseer.

Qadri said he believed Mr Taseer was undermining blasphemy laws, which may lead to execution for people convicted of insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

The Lahore High Court later denied Judge Shah had fled.

A court spokesman said that he had taken temporary leave in order to go on a pilgrimage.

“He remains presiding officer of the child protection court. He left with proper permission from the court,” the spokesman told AFP news agency.

But Saiful Malook, who prosecuted the Qadri case, said the government had sent Judge Shah abroad.

“The death threats have forced Shah to leave Pakistan along with his family for Saudi Arabia,” Mr Malook told local media.

Qadri, who was one of a team of police bodyguards assigned to protect Mr Taseer, shot him 27 times in the back in January.

Qadri said he was proud of what he had done – and many Pakistanis staged large protests in his support.

Mr Taseer had called for debate about the blasphemy law, which human rights groups have condemned as unjust.

He also came out in support of a Christian mother of five, Asia Bibi, who had been sentenced to death for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

The assassination divided Pakistan, with many hailing Qadri as a hero.

The BBC’s Aleem Maqbool in Islamabad says that it is a case that continues to cause emotions to run high in Pakistan.

Our correspondent says that his fate will serve as a warning to other judges willing to take on the tough task of tackling extremism in Pakistan.

Correspondents say Mr Taseer’s killing and other high-profile murders and abductions of moderates have temporarily stifled the debate over the blasphemy laws.

Pakistan’s government has said it has no intention of amending the legislation.

Pakistan’s religious laws

General laws against trespass and defiling monuments first codified in 1860 by India’s British rulers Expanded in 1927 and inherited by Pakistan after partition in 1947

Islamisised under 1980s military government of Zia ul-Haq

1982: Life imprisonment introduced for desecration of Koran

1984: Ahmadi sect barred from calling themselves, and behaving as, Muslims

1986: Death sentence for blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad

High rate of conviction in lower courts, but usually overturned in higher courts

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-15445317

Dawn Blog – Blasphemy Law: Coming a full circle

by BushraS, 14 October 2011

It was bound to happen. When you have a vaguely worded law with so many loopholes, and a clergy hell bent on defining religion in asphyxiating, rigid boundaries, its supporters and enablers were bound to get scorched themselves. The law was eventually going to come and bite them in the back and that is exactly what happened two weeks ago.

According to the news story, a student of a religious seminary in Chakwal, Junaid Ahmad was arrested for being blasphemous. He was apparently seen burning pages of Quran a week ago, was beaten by a crowd and handed over to the police. Ironically, however, a shaken and frightened Junaid claimed that he was in reality disposing off Quran’s loose pages to save them from desecration.

The story behind Junaid’s action was simple enough. His teacher, who belongs to Tehrik Khuddam Ahl-i-Sunnat, had told him that burning Quranic pages was a legitimate way of disposing them along with putting them in flowing water (stream etc) and burying them. As he was unable to find the other two options, Junaid resorted to the third one. It was just his luck that the man who saw him as he set the pages on fire had heard from another cleric that burning the Quran amounted to desecrating it. What followed is an ominous reminder of sharply converging, and rigid, interpretations among various schools of religious thought.

Diversity, whether religious or cultural, is always a good thing. But here, this diversity of belief within sects and sub-sects is stamped with unflinching righteousness, intolerance, and violent knee-jerk reactions. Leaving the organised sectarianism between Shias and Sunnis aside, these widely varying interpretations in such an environment result in friction and veiled hatred towards other sects within one’s circle. In such a situation, incidents like the one in Chakwal are in reality a mere prelude to what can follow. One of the most obvious possibilities, while remaining within the ambit of law, is the misuse of the blasphemy law against those who are fanatically in favour of it.

This misuse has already started albeit it is infrequent at the moment. In January this year, an imam and his son from Dera Ghazi Khan were convicted for life for committing blasphemy. They were accused of ripping posters from outside their grocery shop which advertised an event to observe Eid Milad un Nabi (the birth and death anniversary of Prophet Muhammad). There was strong speculation that the issue was not of blasphemy but difference of belief. The Deobandi philosophy, to which the imam and his son prescribed, do not believe in commemorating such days. So where the incident might have simply been that of removing a poster from their personal property, it was forcefully catapulted in the sphere of intentional blasphemy.

The problem, boiled down to its essence, is this: In all this ritualistic madness, this manic obsession with the act rather than the intention behind it, these “men of faith” have lost the plot. And that is an under-statement. Here school girls are ostracised for misplacing a dot in a word. Doctors are locked up for throwing away a person’s visiting card who shared the prophet’s name. People are persecuted for greeting others in Arabic language. Supporters of blasphemy laws obsessively defend its need to deter people from taking the law in their own hands; but when a man defies this very logic and kills a sitting governor whom he had taken an oath to protect, they cheer and holler themselves hoarse in his support.

So far, most of the victims of these laws are minorities and those belonging to lower and lower-middle income groups.

But it won’t remain the same forever. With ferocious intolerance being allowed to breed unchecked in our country, it was only a matter of time before the factions started using this law to target religious rivals at will.

Right now a broad spectrum of religious right is united in its defence of murderer Mumtaz Qadri. Their slogans, demonstrative of their tunnel-minded support for his actions, should be deafening alarm bells for the rest of us.

It is a matter of time before these stout believers, momentarily united in their hate against “liberal fascists”, turn on each other. With such varied interpretations of religion, how will the courts interpret criteria of blasphemy? Will they take the easiest way out and just continue sentencing people in the hope the High Courts will correct the injustice? Will these cowardly actions really serve as a long-term pre-emptive solution or will the religious factions soon interlock horns?

If there is a legal or public showdown between people of different beliefs, the result will be more bloody, brutal and long drawn out than we can imagine. With all sides equally sure of their virtue and willing to die or kill for it, there might not be anyone standing at the end.

On a sardonic note, that will work out just right for the rest of the country.

Bushra S is an editor based in Lahore.

http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/14/blasphemy-law-coming-a-full-circle.html

Dawn – Pakistan escapes list of states violating religious freedom

By Anwar Iqbal

15 September 2011

Washington. The US State Department has not included Pakistan in a list of eight “countries of particular concern” whose governments have engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom.

The omission, however, angered another federal government agency, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which demanded on Wednesday to put Pakistan on the list.

The eight countries on the list are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan.

Assistant Secretary Michael H. Posner, while releasing the annual report on international religious freedom, said the United States was concerned about the blasphemy law in Pakistan, and about the murder of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer and Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti.

“We have great concern about the overall situation of extremism and intolerance in Pakistan, and we stand ready to work with the government to try to address that,” he said.

But USCIRF chairman Leonardo Leo urged the State Department to correct “glaring omissions” of countries like Pakistan which he believed deserved to be on the list.

“Pakistan continues to be responsible for systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of freedom of religion or belief. Two high-profile members of the ruling party were assassinated during the reporting period for their advocacy against Pakistan’s repressive blasphemy laws,” said the commission’s report on international religious freedom in 2011.

“In light of these particularly severe violations, USCIRF again recommends in 2011 that Pakistan be designated a country of particular concern.” Since 2002, USCIRF has recommended Pakistan be named a CPC, but the US State Department has not followed that recommendation.

The commission dedicated its 2011 report to the memory of the former Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs, Mr Bhatti.

“Shahbaz was a courageous advocate for the religious freedoms of all Pakistanis, and he was assassinated on March 2 by the Pakistani Taliban for those efforts,” the report noted.

At the State Department briefing, Assistant Secretary Posner noted that the government of Pakistan had not yet reformed a blasphemy law which had been used to prosecute religious minorities and, in some cases, Muslims who promoted tolerance or to settle personal vendettas.

“This year, there have also been several assassinations of those who called for reform of the blasphemy laws, including Governor Taseer and Mr Bhatti, whom Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and I met in February before he was killed,” he said.

Mr Posner, however, pointed out that the government of Pakistan had taken steps to address these rising concerns.

For example, in March, Shahbaz Bhatti’s brother, Paul, was appointed a special adviser on religious minorities to the prime minister.

In July, the government created a ministry of national harmony, which will have oversight for protecting religious minorities at a national level. And in August, President Zardari celebrated National Minorities Day and committed his government to support protection of minority religious rights.

http://www.dawn.com/2011/09/15/pakistan-escapes-list-of-states-violating-religious-freedom.html