Islamabad, January 13: A Cold- Blooded murderer being hailed as a hero, a judge’s elderly parents being killed to serve a warning, religious minorities being terrorised.
The assassination of Punjab governor Salman Taseer has underlined the evershrinking space for a debate on religion taking precedence over the rule of law in the country.
It was General Zia- ul- Haq who declared the installation of Nizam- e- Mustafa ( Islamic rule) and the constitution of Sharia benches.
Though blasphemy laws have existed as part of the penal code since the 1920s, when a young Muslim resident of Lahore killed a Hindu publisher in the same city for bringing out a book that was deemed insulting to the Prophet of Islam. But they carried minor sentences — fines and imprisonment of a few years — and there was no specific mention of the Prophet of Islam in these laws until the mid- 1980s.
But General Zia enhanced the punishment up to life imprisonment was also introduced a possible punishment for blasphemy. An additional clause ( 295- C of the Pakistan Penal Code) was brought in to make it a criminal offence to blaspheme against the Prophet of Islam.
In the early 1990s, the Federal Shariat Court — an Islamic court that was also set up by Zia — declared that those found guilty under Article 295 were punishable only by death.
Later, parliament, under instructions from the Shariat Court, legislated to enhance the penalty from imprisonment to death.
But throughout the 1990s as well as in the early 2000s, a debate has taken place on whether the blasphemy laws were motivated only by religion or were the political handiwork of a military ruler who wished to create a constituency for himself by pandering to and using religion. There were many people who argued against the laws or at least demanded amendments in them to prevent their misuse for political, sectarian and even financial gains.
Nadeem Omar Tarar, a Lahore- based historian, pointed out that mob violence against those accused of committing blasphemy under 295- C became quite pervasive in the 1990s and the state’s silence — and sometimes complicity — encouraged it to the extent that it started impinging on the debate as well.
“ The murder in the late 1990s of a former Lahore High Court judge who had acquitted three Christian boys accused of blasphemy was the first hint that many in the society were not willing to tolerate the real or perceived attempts to revoke or reform the blasphemy laws,” Tarar added.
Others believe that the general drift of Pakistani society towards religion over the past three decades and the geostrategic involvement of foreigners, especially the Americans, have equally to do with the narrowing of the space for dialogue on religious issues.
“ Events like 9/ 11 and the US invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq has allowed Muslim clerics to portray the opposition to the blasphemy laws or the demands for reforms in them to prevent their misuse as part of some global conspiracy against Islam and brand the champions of such changes as traitors to Islam.
“ The year 1977 was a watershed moment in the history of Pakistan when the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who ruled in the name of democracy and people and not in the name of God and Islam, was toppled by a movement that championed overtly Islamic agenda and had the military on its back,”.
“ Since then, the share of rightwing and religious parties in the popular vote has steadily increased and that of secular and liberal parties has gradually decreased — with some exceptions,” he said.
—-Agencies