DIHLIZ: The Spaces In-Between

Another Pakistani politician, this time a Christian cabinet minister was slain by an assassin’s bullet. Shahbaz Bhatti, 41, was ambushed and killed because he campaigned for the country’s blasphemy laws to be amended or abolished. Clearly, passions are running high about the mere suggestion that the laws be amended. Punjab governor, Salman Taseer paid with his life in January 2011 for saying the blasphemy law was a ‘black law’. Even moderates chastised him for labeling the law in those terms, signaling that they too wish to retain some aspect of a blasphemy law. The truth of the matter is that the blasphemy laws no longer curbs blasphemy, but rather serves as a diabolical tool for demagoguery and provides a pretext for extra-judicial executions. While Pakistani officials normally say that not a single person was executed under the blasphemy law, what they fail to tell is that at least 30 people were killed once they were tainted with the charge of blasphemy and that dozens of people are languishing in jail. And the murderers of such accused people are never properly apprehended or seriously punished. The blasphemy provision in Pakistan not only kills people, it has become the kangaroo-court of choice for the demagogues–religious and secular alike and an open arena for vigilante murders. Perhaps the only time when Pakistanis will meaningfully do something about this law is when those very people who advocate it will become its victims. The day is not far off when a Muslim of Bareilwi persuasion will yell ‘blasphemy’ at his Deobandi adversaries for not honoring the Prophet Muhammad or vice versa, or when a Sunni will hurl the charge of blasphemy at a person of Shia conviction in order to legitimate bloodshed. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to predict this kind of outcome. If this blasphemy provision is not curbed, among other things, it will certainly mutate into a catastrophic tool of demagoguery and bring a fragile country closer to the precipice. Evil clearly flourishes when good people do nothing. But first there has to be a sensibility of what constitutes evil. But when one person after another gets slain within months of each other without even a murmur of effective protest and concerted outrage on the part of a considerable mass of right-thinking Pakistanis, then one really has to wonder.