Pakistan's blasphemy vigilantes kill exonerated man

Talahore, Pakistan (CNN) -- Mohamed Imran had been accused, jailed, tried and cleared: if anything, society owed him a debt as a man wrongfully accused.

But his crime was blasphemy. He was meant to have said something derogatory about the prophet Mohammed, so in Pakistan justice worked a little differently.

Two weeks after he returned to his small patch of farmland on the rustic outskirts of Islamabad, his alleged crime caught up with him.

Two gunmen burst into the shoe shop where he was sat talking to a friend. Imran tried to duck, to seek cover behind the man next to him -- terrified so greatly for his own life that he perhaps forgot about those around him.

But the gunmen found their target and Pakistan's controversial blasphemy laws claimed another victim.

When I saw him lying there, I felt the blood leave my body, and that I was now alone.
--Ikram Imran, brother of blasphemy vigilante victim




Now Ikram has only his brother's unmarked grave to visit, next to the plot of land close to what was once the source of Mohamed Imran's livelihood. This farmland no longer feeds his family, who have moved away to live under the charity of a friend. The threats remained.

We found his daughter, four-year old Kazma who knew her father was dead but somehow felt he would come back. His wife was in tears, but remarkably maintained that the blasphemy laws were important as they protect the Muslim faith. It was hard to tell whether she believed that or was speaking out of self-preservation.

Two high-profile politicians have this year been assassinated for their criticism of the blasphemy laws: Punjab governor Salman Taseer and minorities minister (and Christian) Shahbaz Bhatti.

Some observers see their deaths and the climate of rage around the blasphemy laws as symptomatic of a broader rise in fundamentalist tendencies in Pakistan.

Others say that religion is all many people have, given the levels of poverty and state dysfunction, and that they don't like it being insulted. It's reported that more than 30 of the hundreds of people convicted under the blasphemy laws have been killed by vigilantes. The state has yet to execute anyone for this crime.

The curious part about this blasphemy case -- and many other such convictions and allegations under the controversial law -- is that they do not specify what the accused is meant to have said.

The first complaint delivered to the police in 2009 refers to a conversation Imran allegedly had with another man in a cafe, but says the exact blasphemous phrase cannot be repeated as that too would be an act of blasphemy.

By the time we get to the court appearance earlier this year, the charge is clearer (but we won't repeat it here, given the sensitivity of the matter). You are left wondering whether by this stage of the case many had already found reason to damn Imran.

All the same, this level of evidence was not enough for the judge, who released Imran. But it was enough for the gunmen.

We went into the nearby town to talk to clerics at the local mosque. Some accused these holy men of fueling the anger against Imran. Incidentally, Imran was a Shia, and hence a minority often targeted in Pakistan.

As soon as we got out of the car near the mosque and showed our cameras, tempers frayed. They didn't care why we were there, they just saw us as outsiders, perhaps American spies.

We left promptly, ever more aware of the growing rage on Pakistan's ordinary streets, fueled by generations of poverty, decades of what many see as government ineptitude and years of foreign intervention.

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Militants kill sole Christian minister in Pakistan

A supporter of Pakistan's government minister for religious minorities Shahbaz Bhatti mourns over his death outside a local hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan on Wednesday, March 2, 2011. Gunmen shot and killed Bhatti, the latest attack on a high-profile Pakistani figure threatened by Islamist militants for urging reform of harsh blasphemy laws that impose the death penalty for insulting Islam.


ISLAMABAD (AP) — Militants gunned down the only Christian in Pakistan's government outside his widowed mother's home, the second assassination in two months of a high-profile opponent of laws that impose the death penalty for insulting Islam.

Shahbaz Bhatti was aware of the danger he faced, saying in a videotaped message that he had received death threats from al-Qaida and the Taliban. In it, the 42-year-old Roman Catholic said he was "ready to die" for the country's often persecuted Christian and other non-Muslim minorities.

Wednesday's slaying in Islamabad followed the killing of Salman Taseer, a liberal politician who was gunned down in the capital by one of his guards. Both men had campaigned to change blasphemy laws in Pakistan that impose the death penalty for insulting Islam and have been loudly defended by Islamist political parties.

The Taseer slaying triggered fears the country was buckling under the weight of extremism, especially since the government, fearful of militants and the political parties that champion their causes, did not loudly condemn the killing or those who publicly celebrated it.

The slaying will only reinforce those concerns and further undermine confidence in the government, which appears paralyzed by political rivalries and unable to fix a stagnant economy or provide basic services for the country's 180 million mostly poor people.

The turmoil comes despite attempts by the Obama administration to support Pakistan, which it sees as key to ending the war in neighboring Afghanistan and defeating al-Qaida, whose leadership is believed to reside in the mountainous northwestern regions.

Pakistani government ministers usually travel with police escorts, but Bhatti was without such protection when he was killed as he and a driver left his mother's home. Bhatti, who was minister for religious minorities, had been given police and paramilitary guards but had asked them not to accompany him while he stayed with his mother, said Wajid Durrani, a senior police official.

A friend of the politician, Wasif Ali Khan, said Bhatti was nervous about using guards after the Taseer killing and had requested a bulletproof car, but had not received one.

Bhatti had just pulled out of the driveway when three men opened fire, said Gulam Rahim, a witness. Two opened the door of the car and tried to pull Bhatti out, Rahim said, while a third fired a Kalashnikov rifle repeatedly into the dark-colored Toyota, shattering the windows.

The gunmen then sped away in a white car, said Rahim, who took shelter behind a tree.

Bhatti was hit with at least eight bullets and was dead on arrival at hospital.

In leaflets left at the scene, al-Qaida and the Pakistani Taliban Movement in Punjab province claimed responsibility. They blamed the government for putting Bhatti, an "infidel Christian," in charge of an unspecified committee, apparently in reference to his support for changing the blasphemy laws.

"With the blessing of Allah, the mujahedeen will send each of you to hell," said the note, which did not name any other targets.

Government officials and political party workers condemned the killing, but made no reference to the blasphemy law controversy. Muslim clerics contacted by The Associated Press or interviewed on Pakistani TV either offered a tepid condemnation or claimed the assassination was part of an American-led conspiracy to drive a wedge between Muslims and Christians.

Bhatti, a soft-spoken minister who rose to prominence defending a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy, often spoke of the threats against him from extremists. Very few Pakistani politicians were willing to talk about changing the blasphemy law because of the danger.

"They (the Taliban) want to impose their radical philosophy in Pakistan. And whoever stands against their radical philosophy, they threaten them," he said in the video message, which was posted on the website of the First Step Forum, a Finland-based group that promotes religious harmony, rule of law and democracy.

"These threats and these warnings cannot change my opinions and principles. I'm living for my community and suffering people," said Bhatti, who was an adviser to the group and had asked that his message be released in the event of his death.

The slaying robbed Pakistani Christians of their most prominent advocate.

"We have been orphaned today!" wailed Rehman Masih, a Christian resident of Islamabad. "Now who will fight for our rights? Who will raise a voice for us? Who will help us?"

Christians are the largest religious minority in Pakistan, whose population is 95 percent Muslim. They have very little political power and tend to work in lower-level jobs, such as street sweeping.

As Christians took to the streets Wednesday to protest in several cities, relatives and friends went to Bhatti's home to pay their respects. "Tell the mullahs that the man who was the voice of the Christians is silent. Where are they now?" mourner Samuel David shouted to a television crew.

The assassination drew condemnation from Christian and government leaders.

A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, called the slaying a "new episode of violence of terrible gravity," saying it "demonstrates just how justified are the insistent statements by the pope regarding violence against Christians and religious freedom."

Lombardi noted that Pope Benedict XVI had met with Bhatti in September.

President Barack Obama condemned the slaying, saying Bhatti "fought for and sacrificed his life for the universal values that Pakistanis, Americans and people around the world hold dear" — including rights to free speech and religious freedom.

In Britain, leaders of the Anglican Church expressed shock and sorrow and urged Pakistan's government to do more to protect Christians.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the attack was "not only on one man but on the values of tolerance and respect of all faiths and backgrounds."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned the "tragic assassination," calling Bhatti "a prominent advocate for minority rights and a promoter of inter-faith understanding." The U.N. chief encourages the Pakistani government "to continue its efforts to combat terrorism, protect the rights of minorities and promote tolerance," his spokesman said.

Pakistan's blasphemy laws were originally framed by the Asian subcontinent's British colonial rulers but were toughened in the 1980s during the military rule of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who pushed a politicized, austere brand of Islam.

Human rights groups have long warned that the laws are vaguely worded and open to abuse because people often use them to settle rivalries or persecute religious minorities.

Right-wing Islamist parties, looking for an issue to rally their supporters, have campaigned against any change to the laws, accusing those who seek to amend them of blasphemy — and creating an environment that led to the latest killings.

"Bhatti's murder is the bitter fruit of appeasement of extremist and militant groups both prior to and after the killing of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer," said Human Right Watch. "An urgent and meaningful policy shift on the appeasement of extremists that is supported by the military, the judiciary and the political class needs to replace the political cowardice and institutional myopia that encourages such continued appeasement despite its unrelenting bloody consequences."

Another prominent opponent of the blasphemy laws, ruling party member Sherry Rehman, recently dropped her bid to get them changed. Rehman, who has said she had to abide by party leaders' decisions, faces death threats and has been living with heavy security.

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Pak court convicts imam and his son for blasphemy

LAHORE: A Pakistani court has sentenced an imam and his son to life imprisonment after convicting them on controversial blasphemy charges after they removed a poster containing Quranic verses, officials said.

Less than a week after Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer was gunned down by a police guard for criticising the blasphemy law, judge Rao Ayub of an anti-terrorism court at Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab handed down the sentences to 45-year -old Mohammad Shafi and his son Mohammad Aslam, 20.

Shafi, who is the imam of a mosque at Muzaffargarh, 400 km from Lahore, and his son were arrested in April last year for removing a poster for a religious gathering that was pasted outside their grocery shop. The poster reportedly featured Quranic verses, officials said.

The organizers of the gathering, which commemorated the anniversary of Prophet Mohammed's birth, filed a complaint that alleged the duo had tore the poster and trampled with their feet.

After convicting the duo for blasphemy, judge Ayub handed down two separate prison terms of five years and 10 years to Shafi and his son Aslam and also ordered them to pay fines totaling Rs 210,000 each.

The defence counsel said that the verdict would be challenged in the Lahore high court. Reports said the duo had been accused of blasphemy due to differences between the Deobandi and Barelvi sects.

Shafi had differences with Haji Phool Mohammad, a man from the Barelvi school of thought who filed the complaint against the imam and his son.

Taseer had earned the ire of religious hardliners after he spoke in the defence of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death under the blasphemy law last year, and called for reforms in the law to prevent its misuse. Rights activists have alleged that the law is often misused to persecute minorities and to settle personal or political scores.

The blasphemy law, which was introduced during the regime of late military ruler Zia-ul-Haq, carries the death penalty for the worst offences. No one convicted under the blasphemy law has been executed in Pakistan though dozens of people accused of blasphemy have been killed by radical elements.

Read more: Pak court convicts imam and his son for blasphemy

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Pakistan Faces a Divide of Age on Muslim Law

Cheering crowds have gathered in recent days to support the assassin who riddled the governor of Punjab with 26 bullets and to praise his attack — carried out in the name of the Prophet Muhammad — as an act of heroism. To the surprise of many, chief among them have been Pakistan’s young lawyers, once seen as a force for democracy.

Their energetic campaign on behalf of the killer has caught the government flat-footed and dismayed friends and supporters of the slain politician, Salman Taseer, an outspoken proponent of liberalism who had challenged the nation’s strict blasphemy laws. It has also confused many in the broader public and observers abroad, who expected to see a firm state prosecution of the assassin.

Instead, before his court appearances, the lawyers showered rose petals over the confessed killer, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, a member of an elite police group who had been assigned to guard the governor, but who instead turned his gun on him. They have now enthusiastically taken up his defense.

It may seem a stark turnabout for a group that just a few years ago looked like the vanguard of a democracy movement. They waged months of protests in 2007 and 2008 to challenge Pakistan’s military dictator after he unlawfully removed the chief justice.

But the lawyers’ stance is perhaps just the most glaring expression of what has become a deep generational divide tearing at the fabric of Pakistani society, and of the broad influence of religious conservatism — and even militancy — that now exists among the educated middle class.

They are often described as the Zia generation: Pakistanis who have come of age since the 1980s, when the military dictator, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, began to promote Islam in public education and to use it as a political tool to unify this young and insecure nation.

Today, the forces he set loose have gained such strength that they threaten to overwhelm voices for tolerance in Pakistan’s feeble civilian government. They certainly present a nagging challenge for the United States.

Washington has poured billions of dollars into the Pakistani military to combat terrorism, but has long neglected a civilian effort to counter the inexorable pull of conservative Islam. By now the conservatives have entered nearly every part of Pakistani society, even the rank-and-file security forces, as the assassination showed. The military, in fact, has been conspicuously silent about the killing.

“Over time, Pakistani society has drifted toward religious extremism,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political and defense analyst from Lahore. “This religious sentiment has seeped deep into government circles and into the army and police at lower levels.”

“The lower level are listening to the religious people,” he said.

Indeed, the Pakistan of today, and the brand of Islam much of the nation has embraced, is barely recognizable even to many educated Pakistanis older than the Zia generation. Among them is Athar Minallah, 49, a former cabinet minister and one of the leaders of the lawyers’ protest campaign against Gen. Pervez Musharraf in 2007 and 2008.

Mr. Minallah studied law at Islamic University in Islamabad from 1983 to 1986, and the first lesson any student learned in his day was that the preservation of life was a pillar of Islamic law, he said.

But under General Zia in the 1980s, the government began supporting Islamic warriors to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the Indian control of Kashmir, and the syllabus was changed to encourage jihad. The mind-set of students and graduates changed along with it, Mr. Minallah said.

That change is now no more apparent than among the 1,000 lawyers from the capital, Islamabad, and the neighboring city of Rawalpindi, who have given their signed support for the defense of Mr. Qadri, who has been charged with murder and terrorism.

Their leader is Rao Abdur Raheem, 30, who formed a “lawyers’ forum,” called the Movement to Protect the Dignity of the Prophet, in December. The aim of the group, he said, was to counter Mr. Taseer’s campaign to amend the nation’s strict blasphemy laws, which promise death for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/world/asia/11pakistan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Thousands demonstrate in support of Pakistan's blasphemy law

Thousands of people turned out in Karachi Sunday to show their support for Pakistan's current blasphemy laws and warn the government against changing the laws.

The rally, called by the leaders of several hard-line Islamic groups, closed main roads and markets throughout the city. Demonstrators demanded Pakistan leave its blasphemy laws untouched. They make it a crime punishable by death to insult Islam, the Quran or the Prophet Mohammed.

A number of banners at the rally stated support for Muhammad Mumtaz Qadri, accused of shooting the governor of Punjab province earlier this month. Qadri was a bodyguard for Gov. Salman Taseer, a liberal lawmaker who spoke out against

the blasphemy laws. Qadri told police he assassinated Taseer because "he did blasphemy of the Prophet Mohammed."

A bill is now before the Pakistani parliament that would change the current blasphemy laws. It calls for a tighter definition of the term, to avoid cases like that of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who was sentenced to death under the law. A court found the 45-year-old woman guilty of defiling the name of the Prophet Mohammed during a 2009 argument with fellow Muslim field workers.

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