Lindisfarne analysis  August 2024

If you feed the tiger – it will keep coming back to the village

For years, with only a few courageous exceptions politicians of all the main political parties in Pakistan have engaged in virtue-signalling their support for the country’s Islamic blasphemy laws. Some do so from an ideological commitment to them, others find it expedient to do so to ensure their own electoral and even physical security. But, just as a tiger who keeps returning to a village will kill children, so Pakistani Christians are suffering as a result of this appeasement of extremist groups and virtue-signalling by politicians which has been happening in Pakistan since the 1980s.

On 1 July it was announced that an Anti-Terrorism Court in Pakistan had sentenced to death a Christian for Islamic blasphemy. Ehsan Masih’s crime was to share on the social media app TikTok what was allegedly a picture of the pages of the Qur’an with lines crossed out, which was allegedly found in Jaranwala and led to an anti-Christian riot there last August which destroyed 24 churches and more than 100 Christian homes.

We say allegedly (twice!) because - not only are there real questions as to whether those pages were deliberately planted in Jarwanwala as an excuse to start the riot - but 27 year Ehsan, an illiterate brick kiln worker, also categorically denied the charge. Moreover, his lawyer told journalists that the police had sent his phone to the Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) and

 “The PFSA report concluded that no blasphemous material was found on the accused’s phone or TikTok account.”

In fact there is a real question as to how the blasphemy allegation against Ehsan emerged at all, as the allegation came from a Muslim police officer acting on what has been described as “intelligence tips”, rather than a member of the public. While even the police officer concerned has said that the allegation is that Ehsan shared the post but didn’t actually create it.

Part of the problem in Pakistan is poor governance – the police lack proper impartiality and accountability, a situation aided and abetted by widespread corruption. That’s why there is a widespread lack of trust in the police in Pakistan – particularly among the Christian minority.

However, it would be a mistake to think that simply improving standards of policing would solve the problem. The problem is much deeper – and is getting worse. This is because blasphemy against Muhammad is the most serious offence in shari’a, and the formal incorporation of Islamic blasphemy laws into Pakistan’s criminal law - which began in the 1980s and has been ratcheted up ever since – has allowed extremists to weaponise the law against Christians and other minorities.

Mob attacks on Christians

A generation ago mob attacks on Christians, like the one which happened in Jaranwala last August, were almost unknown. The first major attack in recent history was in 1997 at Shantinagar in the Punjab, when a mob destroyed 13 churches and 775 Christian homes. That incident was sparked by a Christian attempting to file a police case against a Muslim police officer who had provocatively thrown a Bible on the floor while raiding the home of a Christian. A counter-accusation of Islamic blasphemy was quickly made against local Christians, which led to a large group Muslims attacking this predominantly Christian village.

However, now such mob attacks are far more frequent, albeit not necessarily on that scale. In fact, only weeks before Ehsan’s sentencing, another Christian settlement in the Punjab had been attacked by a Muslim mob who burnt down a Christian house and factory because they alleged an elderly Christian man had desecrated the Qur’an.

What is also striking is that many blasphemy allegations against Christians bear all the hallmarks of being fabricated – or as one might say “a put up job”. That was certainly the case with the blasphemy allegations made immediately before the Jaranwala riot, as the Lindisfarne Centre reported at the time.

The blasphemy laws

Pakistan inherited a penal code from the time of British rule which criminalised desecrating religious buildings (s.295) or deliberately seeking to outrage religious feelings (s.295A). However, it was only in 1982 that it began introducing a specifically Islamic blasphemy law – with a law making defiling a copy of the Qur’an a crime (s.295B). Then in 1986 it introduced a wide-ranging clause which made anything deemed to defile the name of Muhammad “either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly” punishable by death (s.295C).

At the time these Islamic blasphemy laws were introduced it was claimed by those promoting them that they would stop people taking the law into their own hands, in other words it would stop vigilante violence. In fact, the exact opposite has happened. Since 1986 both blasphemy prosecutions and vigilante violence have increased exponentially. Between 1953 and 1986 there were only 8 prosecutions in Pakistan for blasphemy. Over the next 25 years there were at least 426 blasphemy cases.

No-one actually knows exactly how many people have been charged with Islamic blasphemy since then. However last October, in a rare admission of how big the problem now is, Rabiya Javeri Agha - the chair of Pakistan’s National Commission for Human Rights - told a committee of the country’s Senate that 179 people were currently on trial for blasphemy.  Significantly, the Senate was also told that the Jaranwala riot was the eleventh such “significant episode” to target Pakistan’s Christian minority since the destruction of hundreds of Christian homes at Shantinagar in 1997. It also heard that the Jaranwala riot was

“a deliberate act intended to malign a local resident through the wrongful placement of blasphemous material near his home had triggered a devastating ripple effect. The incident revealed to have stemmed from personal enmity and evolved into an egregious case of using blasphemy laws to target individuals.”

In other words, it was a fabricated accusation of Islamic blasphemy.

Politicians playing identity politics and virtue-signalling

As the Lindisfarne Centre noted at the time, the context against which the Jaranwala riot took place was a parliamentary bill enacted the week before the riot.  This extended Pakistan’s blasphemy laws to include comments deemed to denigrate - not just Muhammad - but also his wives and companions. The bill had been one of the main demands of Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) – a political party formed to “defend” Pakistan’s blasphemy laws which had been formed in response to events surrounding the Asia Bibi case. As we noted in our report in August, it was TLP which at 6.30am in the morning sought to register the blasphemy accusation with the police in Jaranwala – an event which led to the riot.

In other words, far from stopping vigilante violence, Islamic blasphemy laws actually empower extremists to take the law into their hands – and demand further laws. As is said - If you feed the tiger it will keep coming back to the village…

What is also very telling is that those accused of causing the destruction at Jaranwala last August remain free on bail, while Ehsan Masih - a Christian who played no part in it and didn’t even live in the area – has just been sentenced to death for allegedly  re-posting on social media a picture of the desecrated Qur’an (there was apparently no evidence on his phone). That is the desecrated Qur’an which last October Pakistan’s Senate was told was in fact, a ‘put-up job’.

Pakistan’s Christian minority are victims not just from police corruption and a lack of police impartiality and accountability. They also suffer because, since the 1980s, even moderate Pakistani politicians have seen it as being in the interests of both electoral and physical survival to engage in “virtue-signalling” their support for blasphemy laws - which have then been weaponised by extremists.

Pray for Christians in Pakistan, including Ehsan Masih now on death row, who have been targeted because they are Christians.