Blasphemy, justice and the religious right

Blasphemy is such a highly sensitive issue in Pakistan that most of the civilian leaders tend to avoid commenting on it despite knowing that blasphemy law has been subjected to misuse. The fear is that commenting on blasphemy law or defending its victims may take their lives and create outrage from religious groups which may even topple civilian government. In this scenario, indeed, the government’s decision of hanging Mumtaz Qadri – murderer of Punjab’s governor Salman Taseer – was bold and unprecedented.

The government efficiently dealt with post-hanging developments. It was expected that a strong reaction would come from religious circles – especially the Barelvi sect, which holds strong stance on blasphemy law and believes that whoever commits blasphemy, deserves death. And it happened: Qadri supporters came out on the streets, blocked major roads and highways, torched public property and harassed media staff. In order to deal with it, the government strictly instructed media houses not to run live marathon of public protests and Qadri’s funeral because, according to the government, live transmissions of any sensitive issue may exacerbate the situation.

Notably, the execution was publicly applauded by a plethora of liberals. They celebrated and eulogized PML-N which is known for its conservatism. More interestingly, many, who were staunch proponents of anti-capital punishment, hailed Qadri hanging with “ifs” and “buts”.

Qadri’s execution was seen as “setting a precedent against misuse of blasphemy law” by significant number of liberals and government itself. Ostensibly, state has given a verdict that whoever will misuse blasphemy law and kill people, will meet the same fate as Qadri faced. This hard punishment, according to a few, will help to minimize the repetition of events like Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti, who had defended a blasphemy accused and got killed.

Now that the furor has been declined after ending the sit-in by Qadri supporters in Islamabad, it is high time to review and critically evaluate the whole Qadri episode and its consequence on future discourse. In addition, a few questions must be addressed such as how capital punishment can create fear among would-be killers, and how this precedent will halt the misuse of blasphemy law.

Capital punishment is used as a tool to prevent heinous crimes. The advocates of capital punishment argue that it can deter crimes and frighten criminals. However, countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran have been executing their citizens over crimes such as smuggling, rape and murder but executions in both countries have not so far achieved the set goal: deterring crime.

In fact, capital punishment has proved to be counter-productive in various countries. For example, the southern states of United States have both the highest number of executions and the highest number of crimes.

While countering religious extremism or terrorism, capital punishment has been used as sine qua non to prevent terrorism by countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan. However, in the religious context, death is never seen as a fear but an honour. If we analyse literature of different religiously-motivated extremist and militant movements, we find that death (martyrdom) is the ultimate reward and glory. In fact, when we kill terrorists – be it via drone strikes or capital punishment—, we help militants to achieve their ultimate goal: martyrdom.

Similarly, as preached by Barelvi clerics, killing a blasphemer is an honour, not a shame. Moreover, this act of killing, according to belief, protects the Prophet’s honour. Whoever kills a blasphemer, earns a space in the heaven. Moreover, whoever gets killed during the process of executing blasphemer also becomes martyr. According to this theory, the moment Qadri was executed; he became a martyr in the eyes of his followers.

Consequently, Rawalpindi, where Qadri was hanged, has started witnessing the emergence of roads and shops on Qadri’s name. A long Kuri Road in Rawalpindi District is being renamed as Shaheed Mumtaz Qadri Road. It is important to note here that the road’s name was changed not by the government but by the people themselves by using banners on different places of the road which state, “this road will be called as Shaheed Mumtaz Qadri Road from now onwards.” On the same road, some shops can also be seen with Qadri’s name and photo. Some mosques had already been renamed before Qadri execution in Karachi and Rawalpindi. Now, new mosques are being built in different places of the country with the same name – one of them reportedly has a budget of nearly 1 million dollars.

I wonder how all these developments—emergence of roads and mosques on Qadri name— affect Qadri supporters. Will they fear death or endeavour to follow Qadri’s footprint? Fear is hard to predict but the footprint is evident: Qadri’s son is being treated as his successor which means the transformation of a legacy into generations. In another account, a mentally challenged person was recently shot down in Shabqadar. He was accused for blasphemy and received several death threats.

Junaid Jamshed—over his controversial comments on Ayesha, one of the Prophet’s wives—was attacked at Islamabad airport by a few people who, supposedly, came to attend Qadri’s chehlum. It is interesting to note here that Jamshed was beaten in the presence of airport security which shows that attackers had no fear of arrest.

Based on the abovementioned events, the rationale behind capital punishment—preventing or deterring crime—apparently seems to fail in the Qadri context.

As far as misuse of blasphemy law is concerned, I believe that precedents are apt when we first work on prerequisites before setting them. Blasphemy law is unchanged and apparently, untouchable. The law has serious theoretical and procedural issues. For example, according to a few Hanafi scholars, blasphemy law cannot be applicable on non-Muslims. Ironically, most of the blasphemy victims or accused are non-Muslims.

Abovementioned issues with the law have been ignored by our legislators. As a result, we have been witnessing consistent victimization of innocent people especially minorities. Without bringing amendments, one may not curb the misuse of the law.

To conclude, Qadri issue could have been handled in a different way – a better way. When he applied for mercy plea to President Mamnoon Hussain, the state could have demanded a confessional video in return. In that video, the state could make him confess that whatever he did was a crime and it was his fallacy that took Taseer’s life. The video could have brought a positive impact on Qadri supporters.

Qadri’s hanging might have served justice to Taseer’s family but not to his vision. He (Taseer) stood for Asia Bibi who also became victim to this draconian law. She is still in jail and living an uncertain life. We are still unsure as to whether she and other victims who were falsely jailed will get justice? Will we have amendments in blasphemy law in near future? If the answers of these are question are negative—which is quite predictable as government has tacitly accepted the terms of protesters who demanded no changes in the law and execution of all accused—then the gist of Qadri saga is: a murderer became hero and victims remained victims.

Jaffer Abbas Mirza is an independent researcher. He tweets @jafferamirza.