Religion-Fueled Mobs on the Rise Again in Pakistan

KARACHI, Pakistan — Final month, a person named Muhammad Mushtaq was accused of burning pages of the Quran inside a mosque in central Pakistan. A mob armed with sticks, bricks and axes gathered on the mosque and dragged him out.

Mr. Mushtaq was tortured for hours and ultimately killed, his physique hung from a tree. A handful of law enforcement officials have been amongst those that watched.

The Feb. 12 killing within the district of Khanewal was denounced throughout Pakistan. Prime Minister Imran Khan stated the federal government had “zero tolerance” for such mob violence and promised that the law enforcement officials can be punished.

However lynchings over offenses to Islam, actual or imagined, are removed from new in Pakistan, the place blasphemy is punishable by loss of life. Rights activists say lynch mobs exploit anti-blasphemy legal guidelines to take issues into their very own arms.

In recent times these episodes have risen to an alarming stage, with growing circumstances of deadly violence.

Critics and rights activists say that vows like these made by the prime minister are mere lip service and that Mr. Khan’s authorities, very similar to his predecessors, has not taken any sensible steps to curb violence.

Situations of mob violence, and state-enforced legal blasphemy circumstances, are extra frequent in Pakistan than anyplace else, in response to a report by the USA Fee on Worldwide Spiritual Freedom.

“The dearth of political will and dedication has all the time stood as the largest impediment to stop the abuse, misuse, and exploitation of blasphemy legal guidelines,” stated Tahira Abdullah, a rights activist based mostly in Islamabad.

Mr. Khan’s authorities isn’t any completely different from its predecessors in promising to deal with the menace of non secular violence, she stated. However “it’s too cowardly to confront” influential spiritual events in Parliament, Ms. Abdullah stated, “and the rampaging militant extremist teams outdoors Parliament.”

Blasphemy allegations have led to the vandalizing of Hindu temples and neighborhoods, the burning of police stations by offended mobs, the lynching of a pupil on a college campus and the killing of a provincial governor by his personal safety guard. After Musthaq’s killing, a senior police official instructed a parliamentary committee that 90 % of these concerned in blasphemy violence are between the ages of 18 and 30.

Simply two months in the past, a Sri Lankan, Priyantha Diyawadanage, was lynched by employees he oversaw in a manufacturing unit within the japanese metropolis of Sialkot. Mr. Diyawadanage was accused of tearing off stickers with spiritual inscriptions from the manufacturing unit partitions. He was tortured for hours by an enraged mob earlier than his physique was thrown off the manufacturing unit’s rooftop, overwhelmed and set on fireplace.

In 2021, at the least 84 folks confronted blasphemy accusations in courts and from offended road mobs, in response to the Centre for Social Justice, a Lahore-based minority rights group. Three folks, together with Mr. Diyawadanage, have been killed by a mob over such allegations, it famous.

In August, a mob within the Rahimyar Khan district, additionally in Punjab Province, broken statues and burned down a Hindu temple’s foremost door after a court docket launched an 8-year-old Hindu boy on bail. He had been charged with blasphemy for allegedly urinating within the library of a madrasa.

Protection legal professionals are additionally in danger. In 2014 gunmen murdered a Pakistani lawyer, Rashid Rehman, in Multan metropolis for defending Junaid Hafeez, an educational charged with making derogatory feedback in regards to the Prophet Muhammad. Mr. Hafeez had been in jail, unable to discover a lawyer, earlier than Mr. Rehman agreed to take up his case.

In 2011, two politicians have been murdered in related episodes. Salman Taseer, then a provincial governor, was killed by a bodyguard after expressing opposition to blasphemy legal guidelines. Shahbaz Bhatti, a federal minister, was murdered for opposing the loss of life sentence imposed on Asia Bibi, a Christian convicted of verbally insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Although Ms. Bibi was acquitted in 2019, she fled Pakistan and her lawyer has been receiving loss of life threats.

“The growing theocratization of Pakistan and rising militant extremism makes it very troublesome for legal professionals to defend alleged blasphemers,” Ms. Abdullah stated. “It takes a substantial amount of private braveness {and professional} integrity to face up to large overt strain and threats.”

Regulation enforcement companies aren’t skilled, or geared up to deal with, frenzied vigilante mobs, and discover themselves overwhelmed, Ms. Abdullah famous.

Pakistan inherited Nineteenth-century British legal guidelines outlining punishments for offenses associated to blasphemy. However the authorities revamped these legal guidelines within the Nineteen Eighties, introducing new clauses including extreme penalties and even a loss of life sentence for anybody who insults Islam.

Iran, Brunei and Mauritania are the opposite three international locations that impose the loss of life penalty for insulting faith.

“For the reason that loss of life penalty, a compulsory punishment for blasphemy, was made a legislation, there have been a number of bouts of religion-based violence in Pakistan,” stated Peter Jacob, govt director of the Centre for Social Justice.

Whereas nobody has ever been executed for the offense, violence towards alleged blasphemers is hardly uncommon.

Rights activists hyperlink the present spike in blasphemy-related violence to the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, an rising radical spiritual get together. And Islamist events and militant teams in Pakistan have been emboldened by the Taliban’s coming to energy in neighboring Afghanistan final yr.

“The federal government’s narrative about Islamophobia in the remainder of the world” fuels the religion-based violence, Mr. Jacob stated.

“This narrative builds on anger among the many youth, which turns into ready-made ammunition for sporadic however large-scale violence towards anybody who’s suspected of providing any disrespect to non secular individuals, scripture, locations or articles,” he stated.

Tehreek-e-Labbaik, the novel spiritual get together, first got here to prominence as an organized power when it demonstrated for the discharge of Mumtaz Qadri, the police bodyguard who fatally shot Governor Taseer in 2011. Mr. Qadri was ultimately sentenced to loss of life and hanged in 2016. Since then, it has formed itself right into a political get together, contesting elections and persevering with to unsettle governments.

In April final yr, Tehreek-e-Labbaik organized violent, countrywide protests demanding the expulsion of the French ambassador after President Emmanuel Macron of France eulogized a French trainer murdered for exhibiting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a classroom.

The Pakistani Taliban have additionally introduced help for anti-blasphemy campaigns and promoted armed wrestle to guard the distinction of Islam.

Posters providing a reward of some $56,000 to kill Faraz Pervaiz, a Pakistani Christian, for posting anti-Islamic content material on social media usually seem in anti-blasphemy protests within the nation.

Mr. Pervaiz, 34, now residing in self-exile in Thailand, stated that he began talking out for the rights of non-Muslim communities on social media after a Muslim mob attacked a Christian neighborhood in Lahore in 2013, torching greater than 150 homes and two church buildings following experiences {that a} Christian sanitation employee had blasphemed the Prophet Muhammad.

“Even in Thailand, I really feel insecure,” he stated in an interview, after a Pakistani Muslim refugee shared certainly one of his movies and his location on social media. Mr. Pervaiz left the nation in 2014 after receiving threats, he stated.

Journalists in Pakistan have shunned reporting on blasphemy circumstances for the reason that rise of the extremist events and their rising affect.

“Overlaying the problem of blasphemy as a journalist, and particularly for the Urdu-language press, can both get you killed, otherwise you’ll be fired for jeopardizing the survival of the group you’re employed for,” stated Razeshta Sethna, a journalist and creator of a current report on the stifling media surroundings within the nation.

Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi, Pakistan.