Having thought I was done, I’m now once again back on the topic of Blasphemy in Pakistan. There is an article in Today’s “The News”, A Pakistani on-line paper, that rather bizarrely claims …
Rimsha case speaks volume of the failure and inefficiency of the Islamabad police but its latest turns and twists have made it a perfect study case that can help prevent misuse of the blasphemy law in the country.
… However, because of the failure of the police or owing to the fraudulence of a person like Khalid Jadoon, there is no reason to support the west-led campaign to quash the blasphemy law
Failure of the police owing to the fraudulence of a person like Khalid Jadoon … seriously!!! … is the author suggesting that if perhaps he had been a decent thug, then the police would not have failed to catch him.
The author and almost every fracking cleric does not get it, the process is not broken, the process itself is a crime against humanity. There is no “western” led agenda here, instead we have a clear incarnation of why blasphemy laws are completely insane.
So where are we now?
Imam Masjid Khalid Jadoon stage-managed the whole episode to get the Christian community vacated from the area. Let us be 100% clear, he attempted to murder this innocent girl and use her death to rile up a mob to clear all non-Muslims out (religious cleansing) so that some religious school could be created. Multiple witnesses have now publicly stated they watched as he did this; he himself tore the Quran as he planted the evidence, and yet all these witnesses failed to come forward initially and let this all happen; evil does indeed truly prevail when good men allow fear to gag them.
There is no case against Rimsha … right? Yet she is still in jail and the prosecution still intends to proceed with the case. This is not justice, but rather is a complete mockery. Their legal system has been hijacked by some religious lunatics who have distorted and bent the concept of justice into some form of religious mob rule.
This is not a law being managed badly because a mistake was made, let us not forget the fact that they put a young girl with learning difficulties on trial for her life because she was accused of simply burning a book – you don’t get to do that and claim to be a civil and just society … period.
So just what are these Blasphemy laws, what do they state? Just to give you an idea of how utterly insane such laws actually are, we shall take a brief look.
There are several sections of Pakistan’s Criminal Code that together make up its blasphemy laws.
- § 295 forbids damaging or defiling a place of worship or a sacred object. – so who gets to define what is and is not sacred?
- § 295-A forbids outraging religious feelings. – how do you actually legally measure religious feelings?
- § 295-B forbids defiling the Quran. – it’s a book, paper and ink, there is nothing magical about it. If you own a copy, what happens to it should never be the business of the state.
- § 295-C forbids defaming the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Except for § 295-C, the provisions of § 295 require that an offence be a consequence of the accused’s intent. Defiling the Quran merits imprisonment for life. Defaming Muhammad merits death with or without a fine. – that puts all Christians in the firing line, from their viewpoint Jesus is God and Muhammad is a false prophet. § 295-C is in itself an infraction of § 295, § 295-A and also § 298
- § 298 states: Whoever, with the deliberate intention of wounding the religious feelings of any person, utters any word or makes any sound in the hearing of that person or makes any gesture in the sight of that person or places any object in the sight of that person, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both. – once again we are back to legally measuring religious feelings
- § 298-A prohibits the use of any derogatory remark or representation in respect of Muslim holy personages. – Ah yes, an Islam only clause; not a surprise.
- § 298-B and § 298-C prohibit the Ahmadiyya from behaving as Muslims behave, calling themselves Muslims, proselytising, or “in any manner whatsoever” outraging the religious feelings of Muslims. Violation of any part of § 298 makes the violator liable to imprisonment for up to three years and liable also to a fine. – The Ahmadiyya hold a variation of Islamic belief that the Sunni majority do not agree with, so they have specific laws that prevent members of this other variation of Islam calling themselves Muslim … yes really. So who gets to decide what is and is not the right type of Islam? Well here we discover it is the majority.
That in a nutshell is just how crazy and insance this all is. It is simply a recipe for a theocratic dictatorship that emprowers some religious thugs to cleanse and obliterate other beliefs via state sponsored murder.
If Allah is so damn offended by infidels abusing his book or abusing the feelings of some sensitive religious nutters, then let him come and smite the offenders himself, it should not be the business of the state to do so … ever.
Links
- Pakistani blogger Fauzia Minallah argues that “The monster our society has become has to be exorcised and its integrity restored so that ‘secular’ is no longer a ‘dirty’ word.”