Hyderabad March 02:
Blasphemy means “Action Concerning God or Sacred Entity”.
Pakistani Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti was killed after gunmen opened fire on his car in the capital Islamabad. He was travelling to work through a residential district when his vehicle was sprayed with bullets, police said.
Mr Bhatti, the cabinet’s only Christian minister, had received death threats for urging reform to blasphemy laws.
In January, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who had also opposed the law, was shot dead by one of his bodyguards.
The blasphemy law carries a death sentence for anyone who insults Islam. Critics say it has been used to persecute minority faiths.
Mr Bhatti, 42, a leader of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), had just left home in the capital when four gunmen surrounded his vehicle and sprayed it with bullets.
He was rushed to the nearby Shifa hospital, but was pronounced dead on arrival.
The gunmen escaped in a car, witnesses said. Reports said it did not have a security escort.
No group has said it was behind the attack, but pamphlets purporting to have been issued by al-Qaeda and Tehrik-i-Taliban Punjab, a branch of the Taliban in Pakistan’s most populous province, were found at the ambush site.
The pamphlets warned that anyone who criticised the blasphemy law would be shot.
In January, Mr Bhatti told thAt he would defy death threats he had received from Islamist militants for his efforts to reform the blasphemy law.
“I was told that if I was to continue the campaign against the blasphemy law, I will be assassinated. I will be beheaded. But forces of violence, forces of extremism cannot harass me, cannot threaten me,” he said.
Pakistan’s blasphemy law has been in the spotlight since a Christian mother-of-five, Asia Bibi, was sentenced to death last November for insulting the Prophet Muhammad. She denies the charge.
GOVERNOR was killed for his comments on Bibi: On January 4 this year, For the same Asia Bibi case the governor of Pakistan’s most dominant province Punjab Salman Taseer, regarded as a moderate voice in a country increasingly beset by zealotry, assassinated.Taseer was riddled by gunshots while walking to his car after an afternoon meal at Kohsar Market, a shopping center in Islamabad popular with Westerners and wealthy Pakistanis. He was shot in the back, said Shaukat Kayani, a doctor at Poly Clinic Hospital.
Initial reports indicated the suspected gunman, a police commando guarding Taseer, unloaded up to 26 rounds from a Kalashnikov automatic rifle. The gunman could have fired that number of rounds in a matter of seconds.
Other guards then forced the police commando to the ground, according to police and hospital officials.
“It was one shot first and then a burst,” said R.A. Khan, a witness who was drinking coffee at the time. “I rushed and saw policemen over another police commando, who was lying on the road with his face down.”
An intelligence official who interrogated the suspect said the commando had been planning the assassination since learning three days ago that he would be deployed with the governor. Police were trying to determine how he was assigned to Taseer’s security detail Tuesday and whether he’d had any help.
Taseer’s admirers called the governor a profile in courage in a fight for the soul of Pakistan, which in recent years has increasingly swung away from South Asia’s Sufi-influenced moderation to the more fundamentalist approaches to Islam found in some areas of the Middle East.
“Taseer showed himself to be a rare politician, willing to risk his life in espousing an unambiguous position against discrimination and abuse,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch.
The Asia Bibi case: In June 2009, Asia Bibi, a farm hand from the village of Ittan Wali in Sheikhupura District, was asked to fetch water; she complied, but some of her Muslim fellow workers refused to drink the water as they considered Christians to be “unclean”. Apparently some arguments ensued. There had already been a running feud between Bibi and a neighbour about some property damage. Later some coworkers complained to a cleric that Bibi made derogatory comments about pROPHET Muhammad. A mob came to her house, beating her and members of her family before she was rescued by the police. However, the police initiated an investigation about her remarks resulting in her arrest and prosecution under Section 295 C of the Pakistan Penal Code. She spent more than a year in jail. In November 2010 Muhammed Naveed Iqbal, judge at the court of Sheikhupura, Punjab, sentenced her to death by hanging. Additionally, a fine of an equivalent of $1,100 was imposed.
Bibi’s husband, Aashiq Fauji Masih, 51 years old, plans to appeal the verdict, which has to be upheld by the Lahore High Court.
According to the Governor of Punjab who investigated the affair for the President Asif Ali Zardari Bibi is likely to be pardoned if the High Court does not suspend the sentence. However, the local imam threatened that if she is pardoned or released, some people would “take the law into their own hands”. Her family received threats and went into hiding.
The constitution Of Pakistan: By its constitution, the official name of Pakistan is the “Islamic Republic of Pakistan.” More than 96% of Pakistan’s 167 million citizens (2008) are Muslims. Among countries with a Muslim-majority, Pakistan has the strictest anti-blasphemy laws. The first purpose of those laws is to protect Islamic authority. By the constitution (Article 2), Islam is the state religion. By the constitution’s Article 31, it is the country’s duty to foster the Islamic way of life. By Article 33, it is the country’s duty to discourage parochial, racial, tribal, sectarian, and provincial prejudices among the citizens.
The blasphemy laws: Several sections of Pakistan’s Criminal Code comprise its blasphemy laws.Section 295 forbids damaging or defiling a place of worship or a sacred object. Article 295-A forbids outraging religious feelings. Article 295-B forbids defiling the Quran. Article 295-C forbids defaming the prophet Muhammad. Except for Article 295-C, the provisions of Article 295 require that an offence be a consequence of the accused’s intent. Defiling the Quran merits imprisonment for life. Defaming Prophet Muhammad merits death with or without a fine. If a charge is laid under Article 295-C, the trial must take place in a Court of Session with a Muslim judge presiding.
SHARIA COURT: The Federal Shariat Court (FSC) is a religious body which rules on whether any particular law is repugnant to the injunctions of Islam. If a law is repugnant to Islam, “the President in the case of a law with respect to a matter in the Federal Legislative List or the Concurrent Legislative List, or the Governor in the case of a law with respect to a matter not enumerated in either of those Lists, shall take steps to amend the law so as to bring such law or provision into conformity with the Injunctions of Islam” (Constitution, Article 203D). In October 1990, the FSC ruled that § 295-C was repugnant to Islam by permitting life imprisonment as an alternative to a death sentence. The Court said “the penalty for contempt of the Holy Prophet . . . is death.”[8][9] The FSC ruled that, if the President did not take action to amend the law before 30 April 1991, then § 295-C would stand amended by its ruling.
Promptly after the FSC’s ruling in 1990, Bishop Dani L. Tasleem filed an appeal in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which has the power to overrule the FSC. In April 2009, the Shariat Appellate Bench of the Supreme Court considered the appeal. Deputy Attorney-General Agha Tariq Mehmood, who represented the federal government, said that the Shariat Appellate Bench dismissed the appeal because the appellant did not pursue it. The appellant did not present any argument on the appeal because the appellant, according to reports, was no longer alive. Consequently, it appears to be the law in Pakistan that persons convicted under § 295-C must be sentenced to death with or without a fine.
Pakistan’s opposition to blasphemy has caused Pakistan to be active in the international arena in promoting global limitations on freedom of religion or belief and limitations on freedom of expression. In March 2009, Pakistan presented a resolution to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva which calls upon the world to formulate laws against the defamation of religion.
The Questions is Why are we so fond of killing people in the name of the same Prophet who brought us the message that one murder is the same as the murder of all of humanity?
—–Syed Majid—-