Beware if you are a dissident of any sort in sharia-infested, mullah-controlled Pakistan. You can be jailed, beaten, stabbed or lynched if you do not endorse the state religion. You can be murdered for anything less than wholehearted endorsement of majority beliefs.

Christian Asia Bibi is still in prison awaiting execution on charges of blasphemy. The past few weeks have seen murders of student dissidents and Ahmadi Muslim academics. On March 30 a cousin of Nobel laureate Dr. Abdus Salam was shot dead. He was a prominent Ahmadi Muslim leader.

On April 7 a veterinarian was killed for being an Ahmadi. This community was ejected from the fold of Islam during prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s time, under religious pressure. On April 18 biology professor Tahira Malik was stabbed in her on-campus house at the University of the Punjab.

On April 13 journalism student Mashal Khan was beaten and stoned to death for allegedly posting blasphemous materials on the Internet. It was Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif's orders to crackdown on blasphemy as an "unpardonable offence" that some suggest may have triggered this reaction. Khan was tracked down to his hostel room, stripped naked, beaten by a mob, and shot while onlookers jeered.

This barbarity enjoys religious sanction and state indifference. No one dares to speak up for fear of suffering the same fate. Anyone with a will to live, whether Shia, Ahmadi or just a freethinker who questions orthodoxy, had better stay in the shadows.

Encouragingly, there have been some protests among the educated classes in Pakistan. Professor Malik’s murder was condemned by students of the Punjab university and by its staff association president Javed Sami.

Also, Mashal Khan’s murder has been protested by several government officials. Prominent cricketer turned politician Imran Khan said, “Even if Mashal Khan was accused of committing blasphemy, he should have been given a right of defence.” Only in Pakistan can such a suggestion be considered daring.

Members of civil groups in Pakistan have also condemned the killings, but no one is bold enough to ask the pertinent question: why have blasphemy laws at all? The most enlightened protesters are cowed by a brutal religious force that draws strength from backward laws and institutions. These derive from a pervasive religious influence exerted by the clerical classes and enforced by terrorist groups.

There is no excuse for criminalizing freedom of thought and religion, as has happened in Pakistan.

Questioning conventional beliefs without fear is part of what freedom means. This is a defining principle of civilized nations like Canada, though M-103 seeks to revoke aspects of this.

In an interview with the former president of Pakistan General Pervez Mushharaf, a young Ahmadi girl asked about the vulnerable situation Ahmadis are in. He responded that it is tragic but she has no choice but to live with the reality.

This depressing indifference to the medieval blasphemy laws is all we can now expect from our so-called leaders. There seems to be no end in sight to the vicious system of laws that place my Ahmadi, Christian, Shia and dissident friends in constant fear.

There may be little that concerned people outside Pakistan can do to alleviate the dreadful injustices there, but awareness is at least a beginning.