EDITORIAL: The case of a police officer allegedly killing a suspect held on blasphemy charges, inside a police station in Quetta, goes to show all over again how the state is simply unable to get a handle on this phenomenon.
The accused was taken into custody and moved to a secure location earlier in the week as TLP (Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan) and other religious parties staged rallies and blocked traffic, even lobbed a hand-grenade into a police station, and demanded that he be handed over to them.
Yet despite all the preventative measures an officer was able to get access to him by pretending to be his relative and shoot him dead at the spot. So much for the long arm of the law.
To make matters worse, JUI-P Senator Abdul Shakoor Khan created further, and quite unnecessary, controversy by expressing solidarity with the killer on the floor of the house, even offering to bear all his legal expenses.
Such things send all the wrong messages to everybody in the whole world – people inside the country and the world watching from the outside – especially since the state, as always, watches like a silent, helpless observer, with no narrative of its own to counter the extremism that has reached as far as the upper house of parliament.
Surely, the good senator must have known that both man’s and God’s laws define set procedures to deal with such charges, yet he had no qualms about publicly siding with someone who took things into his own hands instead of obeying the rules of the state and those of God.
Such instances, especially acts of public lynching, have become all too common in this Islamic republic. The main reason is that the state still hasn’t realised, and therefore never exercised, its responsibility to erect an overarching national narrative that details Islamic tenets about blasphemy.
Also, it has rarely put its foot down to show once and for all that it will not allow the public, no matter how enraged, to become judge, jury and heartless executioner in any case, especially when the law clearly speaks for itself.
Enough is enough. The government must waste no more time in gathering religious scholars, legislators and legal experts to construct a national narrative about blasphemy, one that explains in detail the limits of public interference and the punishment in store for those still daring to circumvent the established legal system.
It’s only because of the state’s limp position on this issue that such cases abound, to the extent that there have been far too many examples of people settling personal disputes, often property issues, by blaming counterparties of blasphemy, especially when they belong to other religions.
This is unacceptable and unforgivable and it’s a shame that things have gone on like this for years and decades. It cannot be said enough that mobs have been emboldened to this extent only because there’s no price to pay for all the disorder, public nuisance, destruction of property, even acts of violence like burning vehicles and throwing live grenades, and shameful and grizzly public murders often on the slightest accusation.
It’s time to finally break this long cycle, and firmly establish the writ of the state.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024