Pakistan’s Islamic Religious Right Mobilizes Anew to Defend Blasphemy Laws and try to get Asia Bibi hanged

Pakistan’s Islamic Religious Right Mobilizes Anew to Defend Blasphemy Laws and try to get Asia Bibi hanged

Now a shrine has appeared in honor of the killer of Punjab’s governor

By Dan Wooding, Founder of the ASSIST News Service

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN (ANS – April 2, 2016) -- According to Philip Reeves, the award-winning veteran international correspondent for NPR, “A strange new shrine” has appeared on the eastern edge of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, “amid the low hills that roll towards the Himalayan mountains.”

He says, “Within a small gazebo, crowned by a green dome, there is a grave, decorated with silver tinsel and surrounded by flowers and richly patterned red carpets.

“Inside lies the body of Mumtaz Qadri, a former policeman whose recent hanging for murder suddenly galvanized the mass forces of Pakistan’s religious right into a fresh, potentially destabilizing, confrontation with the state.”

What makes this shrine so strange to non-Muslims is that Qadri is a convicted murder, found guilty under the country’s anti-terrorism laws because, in 2011, he shot dead the governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province, a widely-admired progressive politician and businessman, Salmaan Taseer, for whom Qadri worked as a bodyguard.

On his arrest, Qadri proudly admitted that he had committed this crime because Taseer had spoken out against Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which carry the death penalty, and was also a big supporter of Asia Bibi, the Christian mother-of-five, who is on death row in the district jail in the town of Sheikhupura, where she has been held since June 2009, on charges that she blasphemed the Prophet Muhammad, a charge she denies.

Reeves said that Raja Nafees Ahmed, Qadri's father-in-law, told him that people were coming to the shrine to “sing hymns” and to “recite the Holy Quran and verses for the departed soul.” Ahmed made the statement as a group of men sat cross-legged around the grave, praying quietly.

“Big colorful banners bearing Qadri's picture flap in the warm breeze. These include images of the vast crowd — an estimated 30,000 plus — who turned out to honor the killer at his funeral a month ago,” Reeves continued.

Last Sunday (March 27, 2016), Qadri’s supporters were on the streets again. What started as a chehlum remembrance — officially, the 40th day of mourning, though the organizers brought the date forward — turned into a mass march on Islamabad.

The police blocked the roads with giant shipping containers, yet this failed to prevent thousands of men from reaching the city center, including the high-security “red zone” containing the key institutions of government.

“Some ran amok, wrecking a Metrobus station and torching vehicles. About 2,000 of them began a sit-in outside parliament. In an apparent effort to deter further unrest, the authorities shut down much of Islamabad's mobile phone network, to the annoyance of many of its 2 million or so residents,” added Reeves.

For several days, the center of the capital echoed to the chant of “Mumtaz Qadri! Mumtaz Qadri! Symbol of courage and bravery! Mumtaz Qadri!” and “Mumtaz Qadri! Your lovers or devotees are numerous, numerous!”

Reeves, who previously covered Europe out of NPR's bureau in London, and has spent two decades working as a journalist overseas, reporting from a wide range of places including the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and Asia, stated, “These laws have long been the source of deep concern to international rights organizations and others, not least because they are sometimes misused to settle feuds, grab land, or persecute religious minorities by making false allegations.

As the protests in Pakistan have continued, fanatical Muslims have also been demanding that Asia Bibi be executed for her alleged blasphemy. Ms. Bibi was sentenced to death in 2010 on the word of a co-worker, and remains the only woman on Pakistan's death row over a blasphemy allegation.

The men, who have been demanding her hanging and who took part in a sit-in outside Pakistan’s parliament, are Barelvi Muslims, a branch of Islam followed by a large proportion of Pakistan's 190 million people. [The country has about two-million Christians.)

“Barelvis’ are often loosely characterized as ‘moderate’ in their faith, which is entwined with Sufi mysticism and ancient South Asian folk practices,” explained Reeves. “They tend to view the rival Saudi Arabian-nurtured ultra-conservative Deobandi school as hardline. Yet many Barelvis are not ‘moderate’ on the issue of blasphemy laws.”

One of the protestors, Mohammad Javed Iqbal, said, “For this, we will sacrifice our lives, our parents and our wives and our children.”

The sit-in was to press for several demands to be met, and one of the organizers, Mohammed Younis Qadri, told NPR that they included assurances that there will be no change to Pakistan's blasphemy laws, and that Asia Bibi, will be executed.

After lengthy negotiations with government officials, the protest came to an end on Wednesday (March 30, 2016). Attention is now focusing on what kind of deal might have been made to secure the departure of the 2,000 protesters. Until then, fearful of attracting official accusations of fanning extremism, Pakistan's media had greatly underplayed the story. But editorial writers weighed in, once it emerged that a deal may have been struck.

“Surrender by the state has never looked more tawdry and dismal,” said an editorial Friday in the English-language Dawn newspaper. The paper reported that, according to protest leaders, Pakistan’s government had “agreed not to review the blasphemy laws - thereby abandoning its legislative prerogative - and to review anti-terrorism watch lists - thereby giving up its executive prerogative.”

The Express Tribune also struck a critical note: “In essence the protesters got what they wanted from a government too weak to effectively confront them and terrified of the national consequences if it did,” said the editorial on Friday.

Reeves said that the issue is of “particular concern to supporters of Asia Bibi.” Her case “should be settled by the courts, not by mullahs,” said Joseph Francis of the Centre for Legal Aid, Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS), who is campaigning for Bibi's conviction to be overturned.

Progressive Pakistanis have watched events unfold in Islamabad with considerable alarm. Talat Masood, a leading political commentator and retired general, described the Barelvis' protest as “fanaticism ... and misguided thinking.”

Reeves said that he is “troubled” by the hero-worship of Mumtaz Qadri. Masood stated, “Instead of condemning him as a murderer and a militant, he has been turned into a semi-prophet, and his grave is like a monument.”

Yet open discussion of the blasphemy laws will remain extremely difficult in Pakistan because of the deadly response it can draw from religious extremists.

“People are scared,” said Masood. “They don't want to get into this. They think that it is for the state to take responsibility. But the state, for the same reason as individuals, tries to avoid it. I think the state, civil society, the media, the judiciary - everyone - has to play a role in order to try to reverse this.”

Masood believes that means debating this issue “absolutely without fear.”

He added: “The state must provide protection to those who speak openly, and who try to clarify what Islam stands for.”

Photo captions: 1) Last picture of Mumtaz Qadri after his death (http://www.pakimag.com). 2) A gazebo shrine houses Mumtaz Qadri’s body near Islamabad. (Philip Reeves/NPR). 3) Raja Nafees Ahmed at the grave of his son-in-law, Mumtaz Qadri, near the Pakistan capital of Islamabad. (Philip Reeves/NPR). 4) At the jail where she was held in 2010 after being sentenced to death for blasphemy, Asia Bibi affixed her thumbprint as signature on a mercy petition to Punjab's provincial governor, Salman Taseer, at right. Taseer had expressed support for Bibi and was assassinated two months later. (EPA /Landov). 5) Dan Wooding with his award from the BCPA.

About the writer: Dan Wooding, 75, is an award-winning winning author, broadcaster and journalist who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, and is now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for more than 52 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. Dan is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS), and is also the author of some 45 books. Dan has received a special award from the British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA), for his reporting on the persecution of Christians in Pakistan.

** You may republish this or any of our ANS stories with attribution to the ASSIST News Service (www.assistnews.net).