Blasphemy in Pakistan
The Pakistan Penal Code outlaws blasphemy (Urdu: قانون ناموس رسالت) against any recognized religion, with punishments ranging from a fine to the death penalty.
[3] Although death sentences for blasphemy have been issued on numerous occasions, no one has yet been executed by the order of the courts or government of Pakistan.
[13] According to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, as of early 2021, around 80 people are known to be incarcerated in Pakistan on blasphemy charges, with half of those facing life in prison or the death penalty.
Secular bloggers started facing kidnappings, and the government-initiated advertising campaigns encouraging citizens to identify potential blasphemers in their midst.
[29] According to the International Crisis Group, while in previous decades it was "Islamist hardliners" who lodged blasphemy charges, by around 2022 an environment had developed where "judges, police and private citizens" were "likely to see rewards rather than repercussions for making blasphemy accusations" and it was state court judges, not Islamists, who "increasingly raising the issue".
[21] The U.S.-based Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ) released its findings in 2024 after monitoring 24 blasphemy lawsuits for six months during 2022 in Lahore, Punjab.
However, the report said its monitors had noted little progress in most cases, with 217 out of 252 hearings adjourned, leaving many defendants stuck in pre-trial detention.
[35] Between 1980 and 1986, the military government of General Zia-ul Haq modified the existing blasphemy laws (which had been inherited from the colonial-era Indian Penal Code) to make them more severe, with a number of clauses being added by the government in order to "Islamicise" the laws and deny the Muslim character of the Ahmadi minority.
[17] Parliament through the Second Amendment to the Constitution on 7 September 1974, under Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, declared Ahmadi Muslims as non-Muslims.
[23] In January 2023, Pakistan's National Assembly passed a vote to tighten the country's blasphemy laws, a move that incited concern among minority groups.
[48][51] The only law that may be useful in countering misuse of the blasphemy law is PPC 153 A (a), whoever "by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representations or otherwise, promotes or incites, or attempts to promote or incite, on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, caste or community or any other ground whatsoever, disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities" shall be fined and punished with imprisonment for a term that may extend to five years.
[50][56][58] Pakistan's blasphemy laws are known to be widely abused by those seeking personal gain from those accused, as evidenced by the Imran Ghafur Masih case study.
Asia Bibi, a Christian farm laborer, was beaten by a mob and arrested for blasphemy in June 2009 after being accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad during an argument.
The Punjab governor, Salman Taseer, was shot in 2011, after he publicly voiced his support for Bibi by his own bodyguard Mumtaz Qadri.
The radical elements managed to force the Pakistan's government to put Asia Bibi on Exit Control List to prevent here from fleeing the country.
In March 2009, Pakistan presented a resolution to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva that called upon the world to formulate laws against the defamation of religion.
In December 2019, the United Nations Human Rights OHCHR called blasphemy death sentence for Junaid Hafeez, a lecturer at Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan, a 'travesty of justice'.
[62][63] In January 2021, an Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) convicted and sentenced three men to death for sharing blasphemous content on social media.
A fourth accused in the same case, one Anwaar Ahmed, professor of Urdu language, was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, along with a fine of Rs 100,000.
[65]Pakistani human rights activists say that charges of blasphemy are being used to harass minorities and settle personal conflicts.
[66] Harshil Mehta, South Asia's political observer, has commented that it is "an urgent need to replace these laws" in his article in Outlook.
