BLASPHEMY
Pakistan ‘vigilantes’ behind rise in online blasphemy cases
By AFP
October 14, 2024
The families of young Pakistanis say their relatives were duped into sharing blasphemous content by strangers online - Copyright AFP Aamir QURESHI
Zain Zaman JANJUA
Aroosa Khan’s son was chatting on WhatsApp but suddenly found himself the target of “vigilante” investigators who accused him of having committed blasphemy online, a crime that carries the death penalty in Pakistan.
The 27-year-old is one in hundreds of young men standing trial in Pakistan courts accused of making blasphemous statements online or in WhatsApp groups, an offence for which arrests have exploded in recent years.
Many of the cases are being brought to trial by private “vigilante groups” led by lawyers and supported by volunteers who scour the internet for offenders, rights groups and police say.
The families of young Pakistanis, including doctors, engineers, lawyers, and accountants, say that their relatives were duped into sharing blasphemous content by strangers online before being arrested.
“Our lives have been turned upside down,” Khan told AFP, saying that her son, who has not been named for security reasons, had been tricked into sharing blasphemous content in the messaging app.
One local police report suggests that the vigilantes may be motivated by financial gains.
One such group was responsible for the conviction of 27 people who have been sentenced to life imprisonment or the death penalty over the past three years.
Blasphemy is an incendiary charge in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where even unsubstantiated accusations can incite public outrage and lead to lynchings.
While they date back to colonial times, Pakistan’s blasphemy laws were ramped up in the 1980s when dictator Zia ul-Haq campaigned to “Islamicise” society.
AFP has attended multiple court hearings in the capital Islamabad, where young men are being prosecuted by private vigilante groups and the FIA for blasphemous online content.
Among them is Aroosa’s son — who had joined a WhatsApp group for job-seekers and was contacted by a woman.
She sent him an image of women with Quranic verses printed on their bodies, his mother said, adding that the contact then “denied having sent it and asked Ahmed to send it back to her to understand what he was talking about”.
He was later arrested and prosecuted by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).
– ‘Noble cause’ –
The most active private investigation group is the Legal Commission on Blasphemy Pakistan (LCBP), which told AFP they are prosecuting more than 300 cases.
Sheraz Ahmad Farooqi, one of the private investigation group’s leaders, told AFP that more than a dozen volunteers track online blasphemy, believing that “God has chosen them for this noble cause”.
“We are not beheading anyone; we are following a legal course,” Farooqi told AFP outside a courtroom that heard 15 blasphemy cases, all filed by his group.
He said that most of the accused were addicted to pornography and were disrespecting revered Islamic figures by using their names and dubbing voices attributed to them over pornographic content.
He acknowledged that women were involved in tracking and arresting the men, but they were not members of his group.
Cases can drag through the courts for years, though death penalties are often commuted to life in prison on appeal at the Supreme Court and Pakistan has never executed anyone for blasphemy.
A special court, attended by AFP, was formed in September to expedite the dozens of pending cases.
– ‘Vested agenda’ –
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) reported that multiple vigilante groups were working in a “dedicated manner” to “witch-hunt” people for online expression or to fabricate blasphemy evidence using social media with “vested agendas”.
“All such groups are formalised by self-declared defenders of majoritarian Islam,” the group said in a report published in 2023.
A 2024 report by police in Punjab province, the country’s most populous province, that was leaked to the media said that “a suspicious gang was trapping youth in blasphemy cases”.
“The Blasphemy Business” report was sent to the FIA with recommendations to launch a thorough inquiry to determine the source of the vigilante groups’ funding.
Two FIA officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that they had received the report but denied that their office was acting on the tips of vigilante groups.
The FIA did not respond to requests for official comment.
An official involved in prosecuting the cases told AFP outside the court: “Not a single person arrested was trapped by any manner. They committed the crime.”
“The law is very clear about it, and we have to enforce it as long as the law is there.”
Arafat Mazhar, the director of Alliance Against Blasphemy Politics, a group advocating against the misuse of blasphemy laws, told AFP that the alarming rise in cases was not because people “are suddenly more blasphemous”.
He said the rise in the use of messaging apps and social media and the ease of sharing and forwarding content was a significant factor.
– Shunned –
The accused struggle to find defence lawyers willing to represent them and the slightest accusation can turn an entire family into pariahs.
Nafeesa Ahmed, whose brother is accused of sharing blasphemous images on WhatsApp and whose names have also been changed, said her family was shunned by close relatives.
“There is a massive cost that families of accused are bearing. First of all, our security or lives are at risk,” she told AFP.
She said some of the families have sold thousands of dollars worth of houses and gold, given to brides on their wedding, to fight the cases.
Dozens of families which have formed a support group have protested in the capital calling for an independent commission to investigate the vigilante groups and their role in prosecuting Pakistanis for blasphemy.
“In this society, if someone commits a murder, he can survive because there are thousands of ways to come out of that but if someone is accused of blasphemy he cannot,” said Nafeesa.
“When it comes to blasphemy, the public has its own court and even family members will abandon you.”
SOCIETY: DEFYING THE MOB
Masood Lohar Published October 13, 2024
EOS/DAWN
PAKISTAN
Thousands turn up to demand justice for Dr Shahnawaz Kumbhar in his hometown of Umerkot, Sindh on September 25, 2024 | Social Media
The swiftness with which the blasphemy allegation against Dr Shahnawaz Kumbhar, a 36-year-old doctor at a government hospital in Sindh’s Umerkot district, spiralled into violent bloodlust, reflects the deadly intersection of religious extremism, personal vendettas and mob violence.
It did not matter that the alleged blasphemous remarks appeared on the doctor’s social media account, which he insisted had been hacked. The people wanted blood, and the police, it seems, were too willing to comply. A hardline cleric announced a bounty of five million rupees, while local law enforcement went into hyperdrive to apprehend the doctor.
OF MURDERERS AND SAVIOURS
The doctor was arrested by the Umerkot police from Karachi a day later, on September 18. He was killed a little after midnight on the same day, according to a high-level police report, “in a staged encounter” that took place in the jurisdiction of Sindhri police.
The local police in-charge, Sindhri Station House Officer (SHO) Niaz Khoso, claimed that the doctor was killed “unintentionally”, but the doctor’s family and rights group disputed the claim.
The day after the murder, the SHO, along with high-ranking police officials from Mirpurkhas and Umerkot, were seen in video clips uploaded on social media being feted as heroes by the same hardline cleric who had offered the reward for killing the doctor. The videos also show a local lawmaker, part of the Pakistan Peoples Party, congratulating the policemen.
The groundswell of support for Dr Shahnawaz Kumbhar, who was murdered over blasphemy allegations, eloquently articulates Sindh’s culture of tolerance, rooted in its Sufi traditions…
In one of the videos, the now-suspended SHO can be heard saying that he wasn’t worthy of such a task, but was grateful to God for giving him the opportunity, while referring to Dr Kumbhar’s extrajudicial killing.
Meanwhile, the doctor’s family wasn’t allowed to perform funeral rites, and an enraged mob snatched the body and set it on fire. A brave Hindu youth, Premo Kohli, tried to protest and protect the body, but the mob attacked him as well. Despite that, he still retrieved the badly burnt body once the enraged mob had left.
The incident spread terror throughout Umerkot, the only district in Pakistan with a Hindu majority. There was palpable fear of a blasphemy accusation, like a sword dangling on their heads, and many felt that they could be ‘next.’
But what was truly worrisome was the emerging complicity of the police, who had played the role of the executioner. A week earlier, another blasphemy accused had been shot dead while in police custody in Quetta, with the cop hailed as a hero.
Dr Shahnawaz Kumbhar
AN UNEQUIVOCAL RESPONSE
But unlike the reaction in Quetta, and in the majority of blasphemy cases elsewhere in the country, the public response in Sindh was altogether different.
It likely has as much to do with the brave act of the Hindu youth, who stopped the lynch mob from completely burning the body, as it does with Sindh’s long history of Sufi saints.
A week after the murder, on September 25, thousands of people from across Sindh flocked to Dr Kumbhar’s village to take part in his funeral, in an unequivocal response to right-wing bigotry. Manji Faqeer, a prominent folk artist, sang Sufi tunes at the grave as it was garlanded with petals.
This defiance is the product of the deeply ingrained culture of religious tolerance and interfaith harmony that Sindh has maintained over thousands of years. It dates back to poets and saints of the Sufi genre, such as Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, Sachal Sarmast and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, who are revered for their message of love, peace and harmony.
This is also reflected in numbers. According to a study by the Centre for Research and Security Studies, published in 2022, 89 people were killed in Pakistan for allegedly committing blasphemy between 1947 and 2021. There were roughly 1,500 accusations and cases during this period. Of those, 1,098 cases — more than 70 percent — were in Punjab. In the same period, Sindh reported 173 cases.
With their latest and most unequivocal response to blasphemy accusations, the people of Sindh have compelled the provincial government to take action. Since then, several high-ranking police officials have been booked in the case, along with the cleric who offered the reward for Dr Shahnawaz’s murder.
A HISTORY OF INJUSTICE
A similar pushback was witnessed in the case of Mashal Khan, who was murdered on the campus of a university in Mardan by a mob in 2017, but it tapered off with the accused acquitted.
Many other cases have followed a similar trajectory, with the blasphemy accused either murdered, going into exile or forced to rot in prison — with the recurring theme being that they are denied the right to fair trial.
It includes academic Junaid Hafeez, who was given the death penalty over social media posts. In 2014, a year after his arrest, his lawyer was gunned down in his office. Hafeez was given the death penalty in 2019 and remains on death row.
The case of 14-year-old Rimsha Tahir of Islamabad is equally chilling, after a court found that she was wrongly accused of blasphemy. The cleric accused of planting the evidence was, however, acquitted after witnesses retracted their statements.
Even in the case of the recent murder of the blasphemy accused at a police station in Quetta, the victim’s family has pardoned the policeman, meaning that he would get away scot-free.
EMBOLDENING FANATICISM
The frequency with which those who instigate blasphemy accusations and take part in mob violence escape justice has emboldened many others. This can be tracked by the increase in not just the number of reported blasphemy cases, but also the recent spate of attacks on places of worship belonging to Pakistan’s persecuted Ahmaddiya community.
The cases in which the perpetrators have to face justice is rare, such as that of the murder of Sri Lankan national Priyantha Kumara. Many in civil society believe that the death sentences handed out to the perpetrators were given due to the victim being a foreign national and the resultant outcry over it globally.
The systemic abuse of blasphemy laws has tarnished Pakistan’s image globally, and gives credence to the perception that there are strong strands of religious intolerance and extremism in the country.
The horrific spectacle of vigilante ‘justice’ inflicted by lynch mobs, captured in real-time on cell phones by individuals taking part in it — and often shared with pride on social media — speaks volumes about how deeply entrenched the exploitation of religious sentiments is in Pakistan.
The strange and chilling fact is that the blasphemy laws themselves are almost never enforced in these cases. The mobs circumvent the legal system to seize power and administer their own form of ‘justice.’
A CLARION CALL OF RESISTANCE
But as opposed to previous episodes of mob violence, where response to the violence and brutality has often been limited — if not completely muted — the response from the people of Sindh has been clear: they want to stand against such injustice.
The groundswell of support for the victim and his family, who continue to face harassment from religious hardliners, has provided a template for people in other parts of the country to take a stand against those preaching violence.
The swiftness of this organic response, which saw a province-wide mobilisation, and support from the rest of the country, is a reminder that the culture of resistance and tolerance remains strong in Sindh. It eloquently articulates the need to protect those accused of blasphemy so that they get a fair trial.
The state must now respond in a similar manner, by instituting legal reforms to ensure that such tragedies are not repeated.
The writer is a climate change expert and the founder of Clifton Urban Forest. He can be contacted at mlohar@gmail.com.
X: @masoodlohar
Published in Dawn, EOS, October 13th, 2024
SMOKERS’ CORNER: SAFEGUARDING SINDH
Nadeem F. Paracha Published October 6, 2024
Illustration by Abro
Last week, protests erupted in Umerkot, a city located at the edge of the Thar Desert in Sindh. The protests were held to condemn the extrajudicial killing of a doctor who had been accused of committing blasphemy. The Sindh government confirmed that the accused was killed by the cops who had arrested him. His dead body was then snatched by some ‘fanatics’ and set on fire.
This horrific incident shocked a large number of ethnic Sindhis, who are in majority in Sindh outside the province’s multi-ethnic capital, Karachi. For over two decades now, Sindhi media and Sindhi scholars have been airing concerns about the ‘radicalisation’ of Sindhis.
However, the Sindhi-majority regions of Sindh have not witnessed as many incidents of ‘religiously motivated violence’, as have the country’s other provinces — especially Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). For example, according to a 2022 report, out of a total of 1,415 cases of blasphemy registered by the police between 1947 and 2021, 1,098 were in Punjab and just 173 in Sindh.
Even though there were even fewer such cases registered in KP and Balochistan, these two provinces (and Punjab) have witnessed far more incidents of sectarian violence and Islamist militancy than Sindh. However, Sindh’s ethnically diverse capital Karachi is somewhat of an exception. Its streets witnessed sectarian warfare in the early 1980s and then, from the mid-2000s, the city became a hub for various Islamist groups to raise money for their militant activities, through extortion, kidnappings, robberies, etc.
Incidents of violence and killings in the name of religion in Sindh are the remnants of a state-sponsored project that is no longer in play — but also indicate that secular forces need to secure social spaces they have abdicated to extremists
In 1979, the state had started to roll out an ‘Islamisation’ project. Sindh, apart from its capital Karachi, somewhat succeeded in avoiding the impact of the project. Over the decades, though, the project began to mutate and started to be navigated from below. It eventually fell in the lap of multiple segments of the polity. These segments began to use the contents of the project for lucrative evangelical purposes, and to accumulate social power. In many cases, the contents were also used to bolster anti-state Islamist militancy.
Karachi, despite being impacted by the outcomes of the project, has remained largely secular due to its diverse ethnic make-up, massive size and cosmopolitan nature. The rest of the province, on the other hand, which has a Sindhi majority, has often frustrated many attempts to radicalise this majority. This is largely due to the inherently pluralistic and ‘moderate’ disposition of Sindhis.
In a 2021 study, the Karachi-based researcher Imtiaz Ali noted that “Sindhis have unwaveringly discarded those who have denied their traditions of tolerance.” According to Ali, “the progressive literature widely circulated in Sindh has played a huge role in developing resilient minds.” Ali adds that Sindh’s arts are influenced by Sindhi poetry that is largely feminine in nature and tightly tied to Sufism. This has shielded Sindhis from being overwhelmed by the outcomes of the ‘Islamisation’ project that has wreaked havoc in Punjab and KP.
Those concerned about the rising incidents of religious extremism among Sindhis are of the view that the incidents are the outcome of the resources and effort that the state once invested in its bid to ‘Islamise’ the Sindhis. These efforts were part of a larger scheme formulated by the state that wanted to ‘Islamise’ polities in Sindh, Balochistan and KP. The state believed that ‘political Islam’ and a vigorous propagation of Islamic rituals were effective tools to neutralise Baloch, Sindhi and Pakhtun sub-nationalisms.
The scheme was a success in KP, mainly due to Pakistan’s role in the anti-Soviet ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan, which was lavishly bankrolled by the US and Saudi Arabia. Some political commentators have suggested that, since Pakhtuns by nature are religious, the state was able to lure them towards more extreme expressions of the faith. These expressions were being propagated by the state and by its Islamist assets to romanticise the Afghan insurgency against Soviet troops. As a result, secular Pakhtun sub-nationalism lost a lot of traction in KP.
The scheme to radicalise the ethnic Baloch in this regard was not as successful, though. Baloch society can be conservative, but it is inherently secular. Most Baloch insurgencies before the recent one were driven by leftist ideas. However, Balochistan’s ‘Pakhtun belt’ was more receptive to the ways of the scheme.
Indeed, while the overriding purpose of the scheme was to neutralise Sindhi, Baloch and Pakhtun sub-nationalisms, one of the spillovers of the scheme and of the ‘Islamisation’ project was the eventual radicalisation of Punjab — the country’s largest and most powerful province. In fact, the scheme was often viewed by non-Punjabi sub-nationalists as the work of Punjabi elites. This is thus a case of the chickens coming home to roost. Another ironic outcome has been the recent alliance between secular Baloch separatists and militant Islamists in Balochistan.
However, the claim that such schemes are still being rolled out may not hold much truth anymore. With China firmly in the picture and anti-state Islamist militancy stalling Pakistan’s new economic and regional aspirations, the state is now trying to assert itself against the outcomes of its own schemes. It is clearly planning to completely overcome these, even if this requires an entirely reformed state structure in the areas of economics, judiciary and even within the military establishment. This is unfolding in plain sight.
This is why the increasing frequency of sporadic, religiously motivated violence in Sindh is probably a belated outcome of a scheme that is no longer in play. This violence in Sindh is more the handiwork of groups who, years ago, had entered through a window that was opened in Sindh by the scheme. Gradually, through madrassas [religious schools], these groups began to flex the contents of the now-defunct ‘Islamisation’ project. The groups are trying to accumulate social power and influence because they have found no mentionable electoral traction in the province.
The ‘left-liberal’ Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) remains Sindh’s largest political party. It has won four consecutive elections in Sindh, from 2008 onwards. Its vote bank has continued to swell. The sweeping PPP wins in Sindh have made sure that no Islamist groups or their allies are able to enter the Sindh assembly. Sindhi sub-nationalists, who were once at the forefront of maintaining the indigenous secular disposition of Sindhis, have disintegrated. In fact, recently they were seen riding on the coattails of conservative/anti-PPP Sindhi elites.
With Sindh electorally secured, the PPP will have to invest a lot more in the social areas that have been vacated by the Sindhi sub-nationalists and are being occupied by the radical Islamists. It’s time that the party secures these areas as well.
Published in Dawn, EOS, October 6th, 2024
NON-FICTION: A GLORIFIED HISTORY OF SINDHPublished October 13, 2024
Sindhis in a Global Context: Past, Present, Future, and Origins (2600 BCE to…)
By Dr Maqbool A. Halepota
Halo Publishing International, Texas, USA
ISBN 978-1-63765-584-9
444pp.
Dr Maqbool A. Halepota’s Sindhis in a Global Context: Past, Present, Future, and Origins (2600 BCE to…) is an ambitious project that attempts to chronicle the rich history of Sindh from 2600 BCE up to present times. This includes the prehistoric period in Sindh, the Indus Civilisation and discovery of Mohenjo Daro, the Vedic age, the conquest of Sindh by the Arabs, the indigenous Sindhi rulers, and the British colonial period in the province.
He, then, provides an account of the post-1947 period, including Pakistan’s martial law periods, as well as some important political movements, such as the anti-One Unit movement and the Movement for Restoration of Democracy (MRD). The author also touches upon the movements and spread of the global Sindhi diaspora and, briefly, the future outlook for Sindhis.
The book is a rather informative and somewhat enjoyable read. The portions on prehistoric Sindh, especially its origins, as well as the reigns of the Persians, the Greeks and the Arabs, were particularly interesting because these are not very familiar topics for Pakistani readers. In fact, it would be an excellent idea to include more of such material in school history textbooks, so our young children can begin learning about these portions of our local history at a young age, irrespective of whether they are Sindhis or not.
The process of rediscovering the history of the Indus Civilisation and the excavation of Mohenjo-Daro, in much greater detail than the tiny portions on the topic one read in history textbooks during school, proved to be an immensely enjoyable experience and informative. Readers interested in learning more about the various aspects of Sindh’s history can also benefit a lot from the excellent bibliography included at the end of the book.
An ambitious and informative book about the history, culture and politics of Sindh through the ages is not critically rigorous enough but could still serve as a starting point for future research
For a book of such a huge magnitude and potential, it regrettably contains some glaring editorial errors. It includes some unfortunate factual errors, which could have been easily verified through a simple Google search. For instance, the year of Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s death is incorrectly cited as 1947 on page 167, instead of 1948. Furthermore, the citations given throughout the text are rather disorganised. Another particularly bothersome aspect of the book is that it lacks an index, without which it is quite difficult to search for any specific information within the book. This will make it rather difficult to use for any scholars researching on Sindh.
Moreover, the book also lacks consistency in the transliterations of non-English words, mostly from Arabic and Sanskrit, and occasionally from Sindhi. This inconsistency adversely impacts one’s reading experience, because one is unaware of how to pronounce an unfamiliar word. The author has also neglected to provide a clarifying ‘Note on Transliterations’ that describes the correct pronunciations of all the non-English words used throughout the book. Such notes are considered an important convention in academic writing.
However, for a book directed at a more general readership, a suitable solution would be to do away entirely with transliterations and corresponding diacritic marks. It is acceptable to do so when writing an academic text directed at a more general audience, instead of a purely academic one. Collectively, these weaknesses spoil one’s general enjoyment of reading this most informative book. This issue could have been dealt with by the text undergoing a much more meticulous editorial process and guidance to the author.
Finally, this book claims to present the ‘glorious’ history of Sindh to the readers, especially directed at those hailing from Sindh. Indeed, the history of Sindh is immensely rich and intriguing for any history enthusiast. It is also true that Sindh has been plagued by numerous serious problems throughout its history, and continues to be affected by them even today. The painstaking research that went into writing this book is undeniable. However, these historical facts are presented with hyperboles, unsubstantiated claims and a complete lack of critique.
For example, the first half of the book, which tells the story of Sindh’s origins, its prehistoric, Vedic and Arab past, is written in an overly glorifying tone. Then, the tone switches to that of lamentation in the second half, mourning the various discriminations and oppressions meted out to Sindhis throughout history. This could have been avoided completely by conducting a critical but deeply sensitive evaluation of the historical facts and examining them for their impact on the currently existing issues affecting Sindh. This would have made this book a truly definitive history of Sindh. By doing so, it would have genuinely benefited numerous generations of readers, Sindhi or not, and academic researchers across the world.
Despite its weaknesses, Sindhis in a Global Context is undeniably an important text about Sindh’s history. It is not the definitive historical work on Sindh that it had hoped to become but, nonetheless, it does provide several points that could help formulate further research questions in the future.
Although the author intends it to be read primarily by Sindhi youth, it would be of greater interest to readers who are actually enthusiastic about history, as well as academic readers and scholars seeking further knowledge about the rich history, culture and politics of Sindh. It would be useful if the book were made more accessible to readers, especially to its targeted readership, by making it available at bookshops and libraries within Pakistan.
The reviewer is pursuing an MPhil in English literature.
Her research focuses on various South Asian literary traditions, including Anglophone literatures of South Asia, feminist literary criticism, resistance movements and resistance poetry, as well as Urdu and Sindhi literatures
Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 13th, 2024
Dr Mahrang Baloch (C) addresses the media at Karachi Press Club on October 8. — AFP
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