The district police headquarters in southern Pakistan was strewn with rose petals, a prominent display of honour. Islamic mantras reverberated in the atmosphere, voiced by the assembly of individuals who held flower arrangements and garlands as tokens of appreciation for the law enforcement officials. This public display of satisfaction resulted from the police officers’ killing of a man accused of sharing “blasphemous content” over social platforms.
The deceased man, a government-employed doctor of 36 years, was allegedly shot “by accident” as he repelled apprehension as per official reports. However, human rights entities consider this incident extra-judicial homicide, the second occurrence of such a nature in the span of a week. Earlier on September 12, a 52-year-old man, under arrest on suspicion of blasphemy, was fatally shot within a police station in the Southwestern region of Pakistan.
These incidents have caused national attention, emphasising the unstable character of Pakistan’s religious environment. In Pakistan, where over 96% of the populace is Muslim, blasphemy provokes heightened sensitivity, and it is a crime on the books that could lead to the perpetrator’s execution. Baseless accusations can result in someone’s death, and there have been cases where crowds have taken the law into their own hands and lynched individuals even before they had a chance to be taken to court.
Those advocating for human rights have raised apprehensions about the government’s perceived leniency towards extremist Islamic groups and the escalating violent activities of their followers, especially after claims of blasphemy are made. The recent deaths of the two men have sparked apprehension that the police, swayed by mob behaviour, may now be bypassing judicial processes.
According to Zoha Waseem, a policing specialist at the University of Warwick in Britain, the Pakistani police department mirrors the wider societal issues in the nation due to its deeply ingrained conservatism. She expresses grave concerns about the capacity to impartially handle hate crimes and control lynching incidents related to blasphemy allegations in the future.
The deceased doctor, Shah Nawaz, faced accusations of “desecrating” the Prophet Muhammad with a Facebook post. Fearing for his safety, he went into seclusion, was dismissed from his work and faced blasphemy allegations resulting from a police complaint lodged by a cleric. Despite Nawaz’s dismissal that he had not written the post on his dormant account, political parties with an Islamic agenda organised violent demonstrations, demanding his instantaneous apprehension. A cleric publicly declared an $18,000 prize for his head, affirming that beheading was the penalty for blasphemy.
Nawaz’s kin reported that he deliberately handed himself over to the authorities in Sindh province, endeavouring to side-step the fate that befell others at the hands of enraged crowds. An official hailing from Nawaz’s birthplace in the provincial government verified Nawaz’s incarceration.
Contradictorily, on the evening of September 18, the constabulary affirmed that Nawaz perished during his apprehension attempt. This version of events was fiercely disputed by Nawaz’s kin, who were unequivocal in their accusation of a staged confrontation, a recognised practice in South Asia whereby officers eliminate an individual, fabricating a narrative of self-defence during an exchange of gunfire.
“Our confidence has been violated by the police, who assassinated Nawaz whilst under their jurisdiction, in lieu of presenting him in front of a legal tribunal,” declared his sibling, Babar Kumbhar.
The consequent havoc post Nawaz’s demise included more animosity. His kin attempted to inter his remains in their private property clandestinely, following veto for cemetery burial, but they were intervened by an armed hostile group, who forcefully confiscated the body and ignited it.
The actions enacted by the outraged horde sparked widespread indignation, as did video images of celebrations involving rose petals taking place at a nearby constabulary location. The provincial administration suspended the officers implicated in Nawaz’s affair and commenced an inquisition.
Islamic factions proposed demonstrations against the government’s response, lauding the constabulary members as champions for “protecting Islam.”
A week preceding Nawaz’s death, in Pakistan’s southwest Balochistan province, Abdul Ali, a trader, was killed whilst detained by a constable. Accusations against Ali revolved around disrespectful remarks about Prophet Muhammad, and due to escalating mob demands for his execution, Ali was relocated to a more fortified detention centre.
Duping authorities as one of Ali’s kin, a police official infiltrated the premises and assassinated him. Subsequently, the official’s kin, all the while receiving adulatory visitors for his role in Ali’s killing, arrested him.
19th-century British legislation concerning blasphemy-related transgressions was adopted by Pakistan. In the 1980s, the ruling government modified these rules, introducing severe punitive measures against those guilty of disrespecting Islam.
In the previous year, the country implemented a law that extended the penalties for derogatory comments against respected figures, including the family, wives, and companions of the Prophet Muhammad and the initial four caliphs. This extension meant an elevation of the punishment duration from three to a minimum of ten years behind bars. The Centre for Social Justice, an organisation based in Lahore, Pakistan that concentrates on advocating for minority rights, revealed that over 330 individuals, with a majority being Muslims, faced accusations in roughly 180 cases of blasphemy in that year.
While no one has been put to death under blasphemy law in Pakistan, the reality of mob violence tells a different story. Previous incidents involve police stations being set ablaze when officers declined to surrender persons accused of blasphemy to mobs, and instances of crowds breaching into police stations aiming to lynch the accused people.
In a scenario that happened this June, a mob in the Swat Valley of Northwestern Pakistan penetrated a police station and seized an accused individual accused of defiling the Koran. The mob lynched the man and torched the station. Similarly, a Christian man was saved from a mob in May, in Sarghoda, a district in Punjab, Pakistan’s most densely populated province, following allegations of deliberate desecration of the Koran. Sadly, he succumbed to his injuries a week after the incident. In February, a crowd assaulted a woman whose outfit had Arabic inscriptions mistaken for Quranic verses, but thankfully, a female police officer rescued her in Lahore.
The Centre for Social Justice reported that mob killings without enough police interference resulted in the extrajudicial deaths of eight blasphemy accused individuals in the previous year. This figure has already been reached this year, inclusive of two murders carried out this month. These increasing incidents are fostering fear, leading individuals to post disclaimers on their social media in a bid to avoid any offensive content misattributed to them.
Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, a radical Islamist party, also known as TLP, is believed by experts and rights advocates to be a key factor behind the escalation in violence related to blasphemy accusations. Initially, the TLP was formed to demand the release of Mumtaz Qadri, an officer who assassinated Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab in 2011, due to proposed amendments to the blasphemy law.
In April 2021, widespread disorder erupted across Pakistan, instigated by the TLP, the group demanded the ousting of the French ambassador in response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s tribute to a French teacher slain for presenting Prophet Muhammad caricatures to his students. Rabia Mehmood, a scholar based in Lahore with a focus on the violence linked to blasphemy, commented that the state’s leniency towards TLP demonstrators and those groups protective of the national blasphemy laws, breeds an environment for unlawful aggression. She accurately asserted that this behaviour conveys a sense of grave danger posed by blasphemy zealots, extreme right-wing lawyers, and law enforcement, all seeking targets for unwarranted blasphemy allegations. This story was first published in the New York Times.