In the name of Blasphemy: Media Outlets are playing with Fire

Pak­istan is among those coun­tries which have large num­ber of cas­es of blas­phe­my, accord­ing to the US Com­mis­sion on Inter­na­tion­al Reli­gious Free­dom, a gov­ern­ment advi­so­ry pan­el. Pros­e­cu­tion in the name of blas­phe­my law in our region can be traced back to the British rule when, in 1927, British rulers intro­duced a law pro­hibit­ing “delib­er­ate and mali­cious acts intend­ed to out­rage reli­gious feel­ings of any class by insult­ing its reli­gious belief”. As time passed, it took the shape of a more strict law and dur­ing the era of Zia-ul-Haq, sev­er­al rigid amend­ments were intro­duced into it. Since then, it has become such a con­tentious and sen­si­tive issue that even the leg­is­la­tors dare not to speak about it as they fear the same fate as for­mer Gov­er­nor Pun­jab Salman Taseer did. Although, Taseer had not com­mit­ted blas­phe­my, he just pro­posed reform­ing the law to fix its errors.

The once vibrant debate on reform­ing this law has been dis­ap­pear­ing from the main­stream media and as a result it has become a pow­er­ful and easy tool for per­son­al vendet­ta. Who­ev­er holds dif­fer­ent reli­gious views, whether an indi­vid­ual or whole com­mu­ni­ty, now and then falls prey to this law. Joseph Colony inci­dent epit­o­mized the mis­use of reli­gion and blas­phe­my law when as a result of alleged charges of blas­phe­my, a mob burned down more than 100 hous­es in Lahore on 9th March, 2013. Anoth­er recent inci­dent in Jhang hints at the bleak sit­u­a­tion when 68 lawyers were charged with blas­phe­my for protest­ing against a police offi­cer named Umer Daraz. Police lodged an FIR by giv­ing the rea­son that the pro­test­ers raised slo­gans against ‘Umar’ – the sec­ond right­eous Caliph of Islam.

Mis­use of blas­phe­my laws has reached anoth­er lev­el recent­ly when dif­fer­ent media chan­nels are lev­el­ing such charges against each oth­er. The back­ground to this episode lays the recent clash between Geo TV and the ISI as a result of which a more aggres­sive cor­po­rate rival­ry among media hous­es has ensued. Oth­er media groups are try­ing to get lever­age over Geo by malign­ing the lat­ter. Most specif­i­cal­ly, ARY group has become the cham­pi­on of patri­o­tism and has tak­en the sole respon­si­bil­i­ty of hold­ing Geo account­able. The way media rival­ries are unleash­ing blas­phe­my charges against each oth­er will have a dras­tic impact on our social fab­ric of the soci­ety which is already in a ter­ri­ble state, as evi­dent by the above­men­tioned events.

It all start­ed when Mubash­er Luc­man, an ARY News pro­gram host, showed a video clip of Geo’s morn­ing show in one of his pro­grams. Accord­ing to Luc­man, Geo net­work has com­mit­ted blas­phe­my by play­ing man­qa­bat in an unac­cept­able and immoral way.

While a num­ber of ques­tions can be raised against Lucman’s alle­ga­tions, I would just like to argue that if this is blas­phe­my then what should we call this?

Con­tin­u­ing in this fash­ion, there would be a Pandora’s Box of per­ceived blas­phemies. In my per­son­al opin­ion we need to real­ize that this is a con­flict between two media hous­es for their own cor­po­rate ben­e­fits and we should be very cau­tious in tak­ing any side. More­over we need to real­ize where such a trend would lead us.

Our soci­ety is already plagued with intol­er­ance and reli­gious extrem­ism. More­over, mis­use of blas­phe­my laws has already cost hun­dreds of lives and impris­oned dozens of peo­ple. In this sit­u­a­tion, the cheap tac­tics of media hous­es espe­cial­ly ARY net­work will suc­ceed in doing noth­ing except esca­late the sen­ti­ments of reli­gious big­otry and intol­er­ance. More­over, the already weak­er cause of reform­ing the blas­phe­my laws might fur­ther be jeop­ar­dized. Media hous­es need to real­ize that free­dom does not come with­out respon­si­bil­i­ty.