Engaging Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law

From Aasia Bibi, RimshaMasih to Shama and She­hzad; blas­phe­my in Pak­istan hangs like a sword over Pakistan’s reli­gious minorities.However, amid the cas­es, there is a con­cert­ed effort under­way to push for reform regard­ing the blas­phe­my law in Pak­istan, by the name of Engage.

A non-prof­it research and advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion, Engage is push­ing for the reform through research and dia­logue, by way of which it aims to impact and change the dis­course ‑legal, social and cul­tur­al frame­works sur­round­ing the issue of blas­phe­my in the coun­try. Intro­duc­tion to Engage: [https://vimeo.com/119857073]

Unlike the usu­al frame­works, such as those of human rights, used to struc­ture debate and dis­course against the Blas­phe­my Law in Pak­istan, Engage is root­ed in the sin­gu­lar frame­work of Islam­ic tra­di­tion for the pur­suit. Dur­ing his recent talk at the Lahore Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­age­ment Sciences(LUMS), researcher Arafat Mazhar who is one of the main indi­vid­u­als asso­ci­at­ed with the orga­ni­za­tion, con­tin­u­ous­ly rein­forced that author­i­ty has to be estab­lished in order to counter the dom­i­nant nar­ra­tives pre­vail­ing on the issue in the coun­try and that this author­i­ty and evi­dence has to be derived from the same source which is used as a legit­i­mat­ing basis for the Blas­phe­my Law i.e. Islam­ic tra­di­tion.

Engage, there­fore, pur­sues the impor­tant decon­struc­tion of what it calls the erro­neous basis of the law through Islam­ic tra­di­tion; chiefly through Imam Abu Hanifa’s posi­tion that blas­phe­my is a par­don­able offence for non-Mus­lims.

More­over, Mazhar spoke of Ismail Qureshi, archi­tect of the Blas­phe­my Law in Pak­istan, and his dis­as­trous­ly incor­rect read­ing of Ibn-e-Abideen (1836) whom he ref­er­enced to lend weight to the law. It was Ibn-e-Abideen, who, in fact, point­ed out the line of false nar­ra­tion regard­ing the Hanafi posi­tion on the issue of blas­phe­my by non-Mus­lims.

And as writ­ten in his arti­cles for Dawn, he rein­forced the sig­nif­i­cance of this Islam­ic tra­di­tion by men­tion­ing that the posi­tion of blas­phe­my as a par­don­able offence for non-Mus­lims “was approved and signed by no less than 450 of the most pres­ti­gious names in the Hanafi ule­ma, not just from South Asia, but around the world” (which includ­ed Ahmed Raza Khan Barelvi, founder of the Barelvi school of thought to which, iron­i­cal­ly, Mum­taz Qadri belonged).

The orga­ni­za­tion’ site is prompt to state that:“Our research actu­al­ly shows that the law is built on erro­neous reli­gious foun­da­tions includ­ing mis­quo­ta­tions and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions of author­i­ta­tive clas­si­cal Islam­ic jurists.

[and by demon­strat­ing the above­men­tioned through informed, thor­ough research and his­tor­i­cal evi­dence]

It is only when this nar­ra­tive – the pub­lic sen­ti­ment– is reshaped that legal reform can be addressed.”

In Mazhar’s words, “legal reform can­not take place in a vac­u­um in Pak­istan” with­out address­ing the pop­u­lar social and cul­tur­al accep­tance and preva­lence under­ly­ing the Blas­phe­my Law.

In short, Engage aims to make use of sol­id research in Islam­ic tra­di­tion to dele­git­imise the basis of the Blas­phe­my Law in Pak­istan and engage the gen­er­al pub­lic, soci­ety, cul­ture, insti­tu­tions such as the gov­ern­ment, judi­cia­ry, reli­gious schol­ars and groups such as non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions and the civ­il soci­ety in Pak­istan along with the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty of Islam­ic schol­ars, in order to push for reform of the law.

As part of its efforts, Engage has estab­lished a Fat­wa Dri­ve which seeks schol­ar­ly endorse­ments rec­og­niz­ing the erro­neous posi­tion on cas­es of blas­phe­my relat­ing to non-Mus­lims; that if an alleged blas­phe­mer seeks par­don, he should be for­giv­en. The Fat­wa Dri­ve includes vis­it­ing major Madaris, masjids, Islam­ic jurists and schol­ars for the pur­pose. For Engage, this is based upon the idea that“Togeth­er, the moral author­i­ty of these opin­ions can be used a force for legal and pop­u­lar reform.”

Well-aware of the ire, con­tro­ver­sy, dan­gers and sus­pi­cions such a cam­paign can and does invite, Engage seeks to main­tain a clean char­ac­ter of its cam­paign – free of affil­i­a­tion, asso­ci­a­tion with dif­fer­ent inter­ests – by seek­ing funds to sup­port itself and its objec­tive through crowd­sourc­ing.

Engage’s cam­paign can be con­tributed to at: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/engage-reforming-pakistan-s-blasphemy-law

Arafat Mazhar can be con­tact­ed on Twit­ter: https://twitter.com/arafatmazhar

And tru­ly, if Pak­istan is to chart a peace­ful and plu­ral­is­tic future for its cit­i­zens and reli­gious minori­ties, it is essen­tial to engage with and over­come all that sus­tains the Blas­phe­my Law.