Blasphemy Allegations: Pakistan Must Reconsider Its Anti-Blasphemy Laws – OpEd

 March 7, 2025 

By Mohd Akram

A Lahore sessions court recently sentenced a man to death for committing blasphemy. Last month, six individuals were sentenced to death in under a week for sharing blasphemous content online—a court in Rawalpindi issued death sentences to four persons, and an Islamabad sessions court handed out capital punishment to two individuals. Although the country has not executed anyone yet for committing blasphemy, several suspects have been killed in the past—targeted killings, police encounters, mob lynchings, and burning the accused alive.

Dr. Shah Nawaz Kumbhar, accused of sharing blasphemous content on social media, was shot dead by the police in an alleged staged encounter in September last year. The week before this tragic incident, another blasphemy accused, Abdul Ali alias Lala from Quetta, was killed by a police officer in a similar fashion.

In May last year, a mob attacked a 72-year-old man in Punjab after accusing him of disrespecting the Quran. The man later died in the hospital. A month after that, a mob broke into a police station in Swat, took a blasphemy suspect held there, and burned him alive along with the police station and police vehicles.

The incidents might seem to be spontaneous, but the pattern and frequency of such incidents suggest the perpetrators are driven by hate and extremism that seem less spontaneous and more the result of systematic brainwashing, mixing religion with state institutions, and hate mongering—hate that refuses to die even after the murder. For instance, the radicals took Dr. Kumbhar’s dead body and tried to burn it to prevent his family from giving him a dignified funeral. The burning of the blasphemy suspect in Swat was recorded on videos with the crowd cheering as if it was a bonfire to celebrate some festival.

First blasphemy accusation-related murder in Pakistan

 Although the year 2024 saw a number of murders related to blasphemy allegations, such incidents aren’t new in Pakistan. The first murder, or rather mob lynching, related to a blasphemy accusation in Pakistan occurred soon after its independence. In 1948, a young military officer, Major Mahmud, an Ahmadi man in Quetta, was “literally stoned and stabbed to death, his entire gut having come out.”.

 He was returning from a visit to a patient and happened to pass by the place where the meeting of the Muslim Railways Employees Association was being held. Maulvis were addressing the crowd and giving speeches on the subject of khatm-e-nubuwwat (end of the prophethood). 

References were made to the Ahmadiyya community and their “sin” (Ahmadis are not considered Muslims by the orthodox Muslim groups). Mahmud’s car stopped accidentally nearby and failed to restart. The mob came, and the young officer was lynched to death. Two more persons from the Ahmadiyya community were killed in 1950. After this, there was no blasphemy related death until 1992, as per the data in a report by Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS). The number of blasphemy-related cases and deaths increased during the 1990s and afterwards.

Blasphemy accusations, Religious Intolerance, Nationalism

 The tendency to make unsubstantiated blasphemy allegations is rooted in religious intolerance which in turn has been linked with nationalism in Pakistan. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, declared in his famous 11 Aug 1947 speech, “You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques, or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State…we are all equal citizens of one State.” 

But his successors did the exact opposite. Efforts were made to block his famous speech from the mainstream media and textbooks. Religion was increasingly mixed with the state affairs and was intertwined with the Pakistani identity. India was projected as Hindu and Pakistan was projected as Muslim. Aspersions were cast on the loyalty of non-Muslims towards Pakistan.

Since Pakistan was created out of India, Pakistan’s forefathers found it easy to build a national identity that was anti-India. Pakistan was created for the Muslims of the subcontinent; hence, there was the notion of making it an Islamic state despite the concerns of leaders like Husain Shaheed Suhrawardy, who didn’t want Pakistan to turn into a communal state and wanted a “mutual relationship between the dominion of Pakistan and the sister dominion of India.”.

Religious intolerance was also promoted by Pakistan’s military regimes. Field Marshal Ayub Khan and General Yahya Khan “characterized Hindus as ‘the other’ and emphasized Islam as Pakistan’s raison d’etre.”. The generals didn’t hesitate in mixing religion with the institution of the army. When the 1965 war broke out with India, Syed Abul Ala Maududi, founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami Party, declared a jihad to liberate Kashmir on Radio Pakistan at the behest of President Ayub Khan.

This language is used even today. For instance, General Asim Munir announced last year, “We do not consider those as Pakistanis who do not follow Shariah and the Constitution.” A year before that, he called the Pakistan army “the army of martyrs whose motto is imaan, taqwa aur jihad fi Sabeelillah (faith, piety, and jihad in the Path of Allah)”. 

During the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, the army committed atrocities against all Bengalis but Hindus were especially targeted. Big yellow “H’s” were painted on properties owned by Hindus for easier identification. General Zia-ul-Haq took the process of Islamization of the military as well as the society to another level. It was he who changed the motto of the Pakistan Army from “ittehad, yaqeen aur tanzeem” (unity, faith, and discipline) to “imaan, taqwa, jihad fi sabilillah” (faith, piety, holy war in the path of Allah). 

Intensification and Islamization of Blasphemy Laws 

Pakistan inherited the blasphemy laws from the British, but the country intensified and made them exclusionary in the sense that the laws provide for severe punishments when the blasphemy is committed against Islam or its holy figures.

There were calls by the hardliners to declare Ahmadis non-Muslims as early as 1953 but the state rejected these demands. PM Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a rather secular leader, finally fulfilled this demand through the second amendment of Pakistan’s constitution in 1974. After Zia-ul-Haq took the reins of the country in a 1977 coup, things went further downhill. He brought a number of legal changes between 1980 and 1986 that made the blasphemy laws more severe and further underlined that Ahmadis weren’t Muslims. The effects were seen in the subsequent years and are continued to be seen even today.

Only 14 blasphemy-related cases were reported till 1986 after which the number shot up and from 1987 to 2017 over 1500 people were charged under blasphemy laws. As of 2021, Pakistan has seen 89 extrajudicial killings pertaining to blasphemy accusations. 79 of these killings occurred after 2000. The actual numbers are believed to be higher since not all cases are reported.

 Section 298-A of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) made the use of insulting remarks in respect of holy personages punishable by three years. Section 298-B made it unlawful for the Ahmadiyya community to refer to their call for prayer as azaan and their place of worship as masjid. Section 298-C prohibited the Ahmadiyya group from calling themselves Muslims and their faith Islam and also forbade them from preaching their faith. It also punishes them for hurting the religious feelings of the Muslims.

 Article 295-A of PPC provides imprisonment for up to two years, a fine, or both for outraging the religious feelings of any community whereas section 295-B provides for life imprisonment for desecrating the Holy Quran and section 295-C provides capital punishment for using derogatory remarks in respect of the Holy Prophet.

 The incidents of desecration of churches, temples, and bibles do happen in the country and hurt not only the sentiments of religious minorities but also hurt their lives and properties. But these incidents are not portrayed as blasphemous. The 2023 Jaranwala incident made quite the headlines, where 22 churches and 80 homes belonging to Christian families were destroyed in response to unverified allegations of blasphemy. The law is invoked when the desecration of Islamic holy entities occurs. After the mob vandalized churches and homes in Jaranwala, instead of charging the perpetrators under Section 295-A, the police registered an FIR against the accused under sections 295-B (defiling of the Quran) and 295-C (derogatory remarks against the Prophet Muhammad) of the PPC. 

When blasphemy allegations are made, the argument of the accusers is that committing blasphemy in Pakistan is prohibited by law, and if someone violates the law, they must be punished accordingly. It’s a different matter altogether that the due process of law is thrown out the window and the accused is killed before they are brought before the court, as seen in the cases mentioned earlier. 

Blasphemy allegations have become weapons of persecution, mob lynchings, and lawlessness in Pakistan. Blasphemy laws are often used as cover for these evils. Blasphemy laws, if at all, should exist to protect the religious sentiments of the people of all faiths equally and to maintain the communal harmony in society. They should not be discriminatory against minority groups and a tool to torture them. While it’s unlikely for any political party in power to undo the blasphemy laws, a gradual approach towards the reforms must be adopted, and whenever a case of blasphemy is reported, an objective investigation and the due process of law must take place. 

Mohd Akram is an assistant research analyst (Geopolitics) based in New Delhi and has a master’s degree in Politics: (International and Area Studies).