On June 1, a 19-year-old Christian youth was sentenced to death in a blasphemy case registered u/s 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) by Baghdadul Jadeed police in 2019. The convict was accused of operating a WhatsApp group wherein he shared blasphemous material against religious figures.
Section 295C of the PPC deals with the use of derogatory remarks against Mohammad. The section states, “Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, *or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.”
The convict Noman Masih was a resident of Islami Colony Bahawalpur, about 400 km away from Lahore. The Additional District and Sessions Judge Hafeezur Rehman Khan heard the case and the forensic evidence against the accused. The police further submitted the mobile phone used to disseminate the blasphemous content.
In addition to the death sentence, the convict was also fined Rs 20,000. Now the convict will undergo imprisonment for six months for failing to deposit the fine. It is pertinent to note that u/s 295C of the PPC, the convict is either awarded life imprisonment or a death sentence.
A court official said, “The prosecutors presented the forensic record of Masih’s cellphone which proved that he shared the blasphemous content through WhatsApp. Besides some witnesses were also presented in the court.”
Last month, Musarat Bibi, an illiterate Christian woman and Mohammad Sarmand worked at a school in the city of Arif-Wala, in the Pakistani province of Punjab, were accused of desecrating the Quran. The accused were cleaning out the school warehouse cupboards, burning rubbish, old files, and unusable papers. A man at the school, Kashif Nadeem identified pages of the Quran among the burnt pieces left. While the school administration called the incident “completely unintentional,” the police arrested Musarat Bibi and Mohammad Sarmand for blasphemy, under article 295B of the PPC, which punishes contempt of the Quran.
Musarat, a widow, has three daughters, two of them are married while the youngest is 14 years old. The youngest one was brought to safety by other family members. Musarat worked at the school after the death of her husband, who was a teacher. Christians living in the Arif-Wala area fear for the safety of Musarat and the other Christian families living there, as in the past people simply accused of blasphemy were lynched by mobs of religious fanatics.
It is pertinent to note that Musarat and Sarmand will be sentenced to life imprisonment u/s 295B of the PPC if the court holds them guilty.
Pakistan’s Track Record on Blasphemy
Let us now look into the past track record of Pakistan’s gradually slipping towards radical Islam and how the country has been repeatedly using its notorious blasphemy law against the members of religious minorities as well as a few moderate Muslims.
During the rule of military dictator Ziaul Haq in the 1980s, a number of clauses were added that expanded the law over the decades.
In 1986, the Pakistan government passed a law to include the death penalty as punishment, with a claim made that there was an absolute ijma (consensus) in Islamic legal tradition about the death penalty for anyone (Muslim or non-Muslim) for insulting Mohammad.
In 1991, the Federal Shariah Court in Pakistan recognized blasphemy as a hard offence, where a single and simple transgression of Mohammad was punishable by death with no possibility of pardon or mitigation of sentence. Since 1990, more than a hundred people have been murdered in Pakistan on unproven blasphemy allegations.
In 2011, Shahbaz Bhatti, a minority minister and Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab were killed after they demanded an amendment to the blasphemy law. Taseer was killed by Mumtaz Qadri, a follower of the Barelvi sect of Sunni Islam and the governor’s personal security guard. When Qadri was hung in 2016, millions of his supporters took to the streets across Pakistan and proclaimed him a martyr. Pakistan’s government choose the date of Mumtaz Qadri’s execution on February 29, as a precaution so that Qadri’s supporters would not return to the streets to commemorate his death anniversary every year.
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