Ahead of the last election the same people who are now demanding the army chief’s head laid siege to the capital. They were protesting against the government for changing one word in the oath that you are required to take as a member of parliament. This blasphemy brigade was egged on by the media and opposition political parties. Khan, who was the opposition leader at the time, said that his followers were rearing to join the protest. Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, the army’s top commander, said publicly that it couldn’t be expected to use force against its own people, an honorable sentiment with little precedent in Pakistan’s history.

After a botched police operation, the army triumphantly negotiated with the protesters, and an agreement was signed conceding many of their demands. The law minister was fired. The word change in the law was changed back. A general was seen distributing 1,000-rupee notes to demonstrators and patting them on the back: Are we not with you? Aren’t we all part of the same brotherhood?

Now those brothers have returned to bite our military and civilian establishment. An arm around the shoulder and some petty cash may be a good law-and-order strategy in some potentially explosive situations. But not when you play politics with the Prophet’s honor.

It’s almost certain that Bibi will not be able to live in the country after her acquittal. And a lot of people like her are still languishing in cells waiting to be tried. There’s a literature professor, Junaid Hafeez, who has been in jail for the last five years facing bogus blasphemy charges. After he was arrested, his lawyer was shot dead for defending him. His current lawyer can’t be named. Hafeez has to be kept in solitary confinement to protect him from other prisoners who might take it upon themselves himself to avenge the Prophet’s good name.

Now that the prime minister himself is in the righteous’s sight — protecting a blasphemer may be even graver blasphemy — and a man even more powerful than him, Bajwa, has been declared kafir, an infidel, one can only hope their respective institutions won’t use the blasphemy card against their perceived enemies. There were about a dozen reported cases of blasphemy between 1927 and 1986, but there have been more than 4,000 since then, when the laws were reinforced.

Pakistani liberals are asking the government and the army to go and crush the mullahs and take the country back. It might be more useful to go after these blasphemy laws that seem to be turning all of us into blasphemers.