EDITORIAL: Incidents of enraged mobs attacking alleged blasphemers are happening with increasing frequency. Last Saturday in Sargodha, a frenzied mob, apparently instigated by members of a religio-political party, arrived at the residence of a Christian man and tried to lynch him.
Fortunately, he was rescued by the police though in a critical condition. Despite the efforts of police, the city’s Peace Committee and some local residents to calm the situation, a shoe-making unit and other property that belonged to the accused man’s son were set on fire.
However, a press report has quoted a local resident as saying some pages of the Holy Quran were found burnt on the cover of a water pump adjacent to the accused person’s house, but no one saw him burning them, adding that the accused man’s family was honourable, not known for any malicious activity.
Yet as is the wont of police in such cases, bowing to mob pressure they registered a case against the victim on behalf of an activist of the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), without conducting proper investigation into the charge.
Its pattern repeated over and over again. In August of last year, hundreds of people led by TLP activists attacked a Christian neighbourhood in Faisalabad following rumours that two members of the community had desecrated pages of the Holy Quran. Nearly a dozen churches were torched and several houses destroyed.
In 2021, Sri Lankan manager of a factory in Sialkot was brutally lynched. There are several other incidents wherein angry hordes provoked by purported religious elements, including mosque imams, attacked Christian localities causing loss of life and property.
In one harrowing incident near Lahore, incited by a local cleric on his mosque microphone a mob first tortured a Christian couple, who worked at a local brick kiln, and then hurled them into the kiln’s furnace. Many Muslims have also been lynched on the pretext of blasphemy.
The motivation almost always is a property grab, personal grudge or a professional rivalry, and religious sentiments are exploited to provoke people to take law into their own hands.
Those saved by the police languish in jails for years because certain self-proclaimed guardians of the faith have made the environment so fearful that the police, defence lawyers, and judges find it too risky to do their job in a free and fair manner.
Back in 1997, a Lahore High Court judge, Arif Iqbal Bhatti, was shot dead in his chamber for acquitting two Christian men of blasphemy charges. And in 2014 a lawyer, Rashid Rehman, was murdered in Multan for defending a university teacher accused of blasphemy.
It is pertinent to recall that while hearing the case of Mumtaz Qadri who had assassinated Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer, the Supreme Court had observed, “the majority of blasphemy cases are based on false accusations stemming from property issues or other personal or family vendettas rather than genuine instance of blasphemy, and they inevitably lead to mob violence against an entire community.”
A way must be found to prevent people from taking the law into their own hands, and deter false accusations. The government should hold meetings with all prominent religious leaders to arrive at a consensus on addressing misuse and abuse of the blasphemy laws.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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