This article was written by Dr Younus Shaikh and mailed from the Central Jail, Rawalpindi, while he was awaiting the outcome of his appeal against the death sentence. Unlike his previous article ‘The Gods of War’, published under a pseudonym in the August 2003 issue of IHN, we are delighted to be able to publish the present article under his own name following his release from jail.

Like the infamous anti-female Pakistani Islamic Hudood ordinance (which prescribes capital punishment for victims of rape as well as for those involved in normal male-female sex with consent), the iniquitous Pakistani blasphemy laws are being pressed into service against women for resisting sexual harassment (The Dawn, 7 August, 2003).

Like the Hudood ordinance, the blasphemy laws are manifestly unjust man-made laws, projected as divine, in order to promote religio-political tyranny and hegemony. These fascist laws were the illegitimate creation of the Islamist Pakistani dictator General Zia ul Haq, who introduced these repressive and controversial laws without public discussion or approval by a constitutionally elected parliament. These illiberal laws continue to play havoc with the lives of countless Pakistanis and their families.

“The most shaming item listed in the Amnesty International Report (2002) is ‘Abuse of Blasphemy Laws’. If there are black marks against the human rights record in this country (Pakistan), blasphemy laws must take the pride of place in the list... These laws are intrinsically susceptible to abuse and are systematically abused with impunity against [liberal Muslims and] members of minority religious communities [like Christians, Ahmadis, etc.],” wrote Ardeshir Cowasjee, a celebrated columnist in the Karachi daily, The Dawn, on 1 June, 2003. He goes on:

These laws ... are used with impunity against minority religious communities by those motivated by personal enmity, by those motivated by monetary material or political gain. One detestable fact is that accusations are normally accepted uncritically by the prosecuting authorities out of fear of threats, intimidation, injury or even loss of life should they fail to accept them. Also, those accused are often subjected to vile treatment because of the emotional manner in which charges are brought forward and publicized.

Many lawyers and members of the lower judiciary exhibit open bias against those charged, and local lawyers often refuse to take up blasphemy cases. Trials are invariably highly disorderly and the courts are often packed with the local clergy and their illiterate brainwashed followers all baying for the blood of the accused.

... in 2002, with a war being waged against terrorism, in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, as records the AI Report, ‘several men were sentenced to death for blasphemy, and others accused of blasphemy were killed, some in circumstances suggesting official complicity or acquiescence in the killings.’ One man sentenced to death was later found to be a lunatic. This is quite usual, as it is never taken into account by the courts that no sane man, knowing the consequences, would even contemplate blasphemy. In June last year a prisoner jailed and sentenced to death for blasphemy was shot dead in jail and that was the end of the matter. In July, a man who had been sentenced to death for blasphemy, and freed on bail because of his mental state, was stoned to death by a mob on the call of a local Muslim cleric. The police remained inactive.

Mr Asghar Ali Engineer, the world-renowned Islamic scholar, had this to say (The Dawn, 13 July, 2003):

As a Muslim and a student of Islam, I don’t consider death penalty for blasphemy as the correct thing... This blasphemy law is basically political. The gross misuse of this law is taking place against Muslims. Even indirect inferences are drawn and the accused is arrested under Blasphemy Law and two judges pass the death sentence under public pressure. It brings bad name to Islam. It has tarnished Pakistan’s image very badly in the world. The world thinks that Pakistani Muslims have no tolerance.

To date, almost all cases registered under the iniquitous Blasphemy Laws have proved to be false and concocted out of malice, mischief, or misunderstanding. The trials have been unfair; defence lawyers have been harassed; trial courts have been under religious pressure or threat; the judgements of courts against those accused have been arbitrary, whimsical, biased, or based on mere conjecture or on the flimsiest foundation: naked and transparent injustice in the name of Islam, the sentences of death have been virtual juridical murders. The victims of this horrible injustice have been made to suffer long years of unnecessary, unjustifiable, and inhuman torture on mere allegations by Islamist mullahs and the Islamist state apparatus, denied even the most basic of legitimate facilities and needs even when suffering from disease, distress, or disability. Victims have been harassed, ridiculed, blackmailed, man-handled, threatened, and even murdered in prison.

Recently two women were indicted under the Blasphemy Laws in Lahore, one, allegedly, for resisting gang-rape by the police, the other for refusing illicit sex (adultery) with a neighbour. What a novel Pakistani way of earning heavenly bliss and spiritual elevation, and of glorifying Islam! Truly the menace of the Blasphemy and Hudood Laws, and their flagrant abuse, is the biggest and blackest stigma on the face of Islam, of Muslims, and of Pakistan.

Younus Shaikh

Death cell, Central Jail, Rawalpindi

18 October, 2003