That Human Rights Dilemma : Pakistan's Blasphemy Law

A protester holds an image of Asia Bibi in Islamabad. Her husband and children are living at a secret address in fear of their lives. Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images

"Britain was concerned about potential unrest in the country, attacks on embassies and civilians."
"They have not offered automatic asylum, whereas several countries have now come forward. The family [of Asia Bibi, Christian Pakistani released from a death warrant] will definitely not be coming to Britain."
"[While Britain was] being helpful [it was] an enduring shame that a country with such a lauded history of helping refugees and asylum seekers, that when the Asia Bibi case has come before them, they haven't been as generous as they have for many victims in the past."
"It does seem to me that Britain is now a country that is unsafe for those who may be tarred with an allegation of blasphemy."
"We are very aware that there are extremist elements in this country. Britain would have been one of their first choices. America, Britain and Canada, these would have been their first choices [for haven]."
Wilson Chowdhry, British Pakistani Christian Association

"The extremists are more emboldened today than at any other time since 9/11. They refuse to accept the possibility that someone can be acquitted after being charged with blasphemy, and feel executing Asia Bibi is the only option."
"Either this or someone kills her extrajudicially like the sixty other Pakistanis accused of blasphemy and murdered before trial in recent years. At the heart of this debate is paranoia among Pakistani extremists that Islam is under threat and the misperception that foreign pressure protects those who commit blasphemy."
"Interestingly, most Pakistanis and more than a billion Muslims worldwide don't share this paranoid extremist outlook. Pakistani extremists see the Bibi case as one of the grand decisive intellectual battles for Islam. However the truth is that it was a brawl between a group of low-educated house cleaners that morphed into a blasphemy case, likely because Bibi is Christian."
Ahmed Quraishi, Daily Pakistan

Asia Bibi at a prison in Sheikhupura near Lahore, Pakistan. Photograph: AP

Mr. Quraishi, while deploring the frenzied mob demands of Pakistan's vicious religious bigots is unwilling evidently to admit to himself along with his readership that there is rather more than the handful of extremists howling for blood among Muslims than he attributes. The plight of Christians in Muslim majority countries such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Palestinian Territories among others, is such that their ancient Christian populations have steadily diminished in fear for their lives, seeking haven elsewhere than the geography where Christianity emerged.

The religious fervour and medieval passions that Pakistanis convinced that non-Muslims have nothing better to do than disparage the Prophet Mohammad drives them to demand the death penalty for all those suspected of impugning the honour of the historical figure. Making mention of parts of his autobiography to point out the unsavoury aspects of both his character and his pronouncements held in such esteem by his followers, is enough to ensure that some Muslim crazies will plan murder. And it is not the handful that Mr. Quraishi implies.

A national poll has revealed that at least ten million Pakistanis would be willing to take personal action to kill this woman whose death penalty for ostensibly disparaging the Prophet that the Pakistan Supreme Court had the decency to dismiss on appeal. They too have been threatened with death, as was the lawyer representing this Catholic woman desperate to leave her country of birth, leading him to flee the country for safe haven elsewhere. More influential people than he, coming to the support of this unfortunate woman paid for their courage with their lives.

Supporters of the Pakistani religious Islamist group Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) gather during a protest rally against the release of Asia Bib in early November.  CNN

Asia Bibi, a 54-year-old farm worker, has been on death row for nine long years. In 2009 she mortally offended fellow farm workers when she offered them water --  on a hot day picking berries -- from a communal bowl she had slaked her own thirst from. Two women refused her offer, considering the bowl to have been contaminated by a non-Muslim. They later denounced her to police claiming she had insulted Muhammad, leading her to be charged with blasphemy, a capital offence in Pakistan.

The verdict that freed her from death row convinced violent mobs to threaten her life as they embarked on a public, destructive rage, laying siege to major cities, blocking motorways, torching cars, buses and buildings, threatening the lives of the prime minister, the chief justice and the army chief. No mass arrests from the government. Instead Prime Minister Imran Khan appeared on national television to state that "This is not a service being done for Islam. This is enmity taking place against the country". However, he all too soon backed down.

The fanatic Islamist Tehreek-e-Labaik political party agreed it would call off protests as long as the government received their petition to the supreme court protesting the acquittal. At the same time they will not relent in calling for Asia Bibi's death, that the death penalty imposed upon her in 2010 be restored and her life forfeit. To this the craven Imran Khan agreed, so that though Asia Bibi was 'freed' by the Supreme Court, she is not 'free' to leave the country until the matter has been resolved to the satisfaction of the extremists.

Islamists burn a poster of Asia Bibi in protest at her acquittal for blasphemy. AP

A Free Woman Threatened With Death

"She is a free woman now. Her writ is being heard. When a decision is made, she will go wherever she wants to go. It is a free country; she is a free national."
"She can go wherever she wants to go. No one can object to that. If a free national of Pakistan wants to go somewhere, he/she has to get a visa and go."
"Nothing odd about that."
Mohammad Faisal, Pakistan Foreign Office

A Pakistani supporter of the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ), a hardline religious party, holds an image of Asia Bibi during a protest following her acquittal over blasphemy Credit: AAMIR QURESHI/AFP

"The lives of Asia Bibi and her family are in danger as long as she remains in Pakistan, as the protests following the verdict have shown."

"We ask that Mrs May takes swift action to help secure the safe exit of Asia Bibi and her family from Pakistan, as the situation is becoming increasingly perilous."
Nasir Saeed, director, CLAAS UK - a charity supporting persecuted Christians in Pakistan

Ashiq Masih and Eisham Ashiq, husband and daughter of Asia Bibi. Bibi, Credit: Teri Pengilley

The arrest on charges of blasphemy against The Prophet that Asia Bibi, a Christian Pakistani woman was convicted of which led to eight years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, led to other victims in that fundamentalist Islamist society. Influential people in the governmental hierarchy came to her defense, one the Muslim governor of Punjab who petitioned for a pardon and campaigned for the blasphemy law to be discarded and for his efforts he was assassinated by his own bodyguard who riddled his body with 27 bullets from his assault rifle, in 2011.

Asia Bibi committed a dire offence against The Prophet which under Pakistani law merits the death penalty or life imprisonment. Her offence was to offer to her farm co-workers gathering berries on a hot summer day, water from a container she had slaked her thirst with, and which she had herself brought along on orders from their overseer. It is seen as an offence in Islam for non-Muslims to drink from a communal bowl meant for the use of Muslims. When her co-workers refused her offer, she lashed back at the insult, impugning the name of The Prophet.

A crowd was prepared to lynch her but police intervened and took her to prison where she was charged with blasphemy. The Pakistani Minister for Minority Affairs of the Pakistan national government, Shahbaz Bhatti, a Catholic, also came to her defence and he too was murdered by Islamist extremists. Although Salmaan Taseer, the Muslim governor of Punjab's assassin was brought to justice, not so with the murderers of Shahbaz Bhatti; he was a Christian, after all.

Asia Bibi's husband has pleaded for asylum from the West, for his wife and their family. He spoke directly of haven, mentioning Canada, the United States and Great Britain, imploring them to help move his wife out of Pakistan and to safety: "I am requesting the Prime Minister of the UK help us and as far as possible grant us freedom." Britain has a huge expatriate Pakistani population, but there is also a smaller Pakistani Christian demographic in Britain.

It doesn't appear likely at this point that Britain will respond affirmatively, obviously not wishing to roil the passions of its own Pakistani population to express their disfavour by riots similar to those that have broken out in Pakistan. Ashiq Masih then turned to the Netherlands, hoping for a visa and safety there, but the response was that Dutch law requires one to be present in the country to request a visa. The U.S. under President Trump is unlikely, given his [fairly accurate] resistance against the entrance to the U.S. of people from "shit countries", to offer haven.

Which leaves the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau which has unlimited patience for the unauthorized, illegal entry of economic migrants posing as refugees, from Africa, Haiti and the Middle East streaming across the border from the U.S. into Canada at illegal entry points, clearly posted as such. Asia Bibi has some strikes against her that would be attractive to the 'progressive' in Trudeau; she is a woman and a woman of colour, and she is persecuted. If only she was a member of the LGBTQ2 community he might be inspired to offer Canada's protection.

Pakistan has a population of 202-million, the vast majority of which are Muslim. A recent national poll revealed the presence of ten million Pakistanis willing to themselves kill Asia Bibi as a sacred Islamic duty in punishment for "blasphemy", or to do so because they are attracted to the reward that is offered. A large cash reward has been offered by one Pakistani mullah for anyone who kills the woman, whether while in detention or on the street.

On the street is sufficiently problematical for the government which winces at the reputation it has earned on the international stage for violent intolerance and national laws that victimize non-Muslims that she cannot be released, though freed by order of the Pakistani supreme court which acquitted her of the absurd charges. So there is no longer any fear the state will proceed with her execution, and no guarantees that vigilante mob action won't proceed to mete out their own version of justice to a blasphemer. It's the Pakistani way.

Bibi's lawyer, a man of exceptional courage, saw the expedience of making himself scarce. Saiful Malook fled the country in the wake of the acquittal of his client, because death threats were extended to him and to his family for his part in support of his client and subsequent outrage at the outcome of the supreme court's ruling, dismissing her previous conviction as "nothing short of concoction incarnate".

The streets of the capital and other cities have been rife with protests, screeching accusations against the supreme court, and insistent demands that Asia Bibi be executed. She must be allowed to leave the country and to live elsewhere, in peace and security. What better place than Canada? In 2011, Shahbaz Bhatti visited Canada and met with then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who offered him refuge in Canada, aware his life was in danger. The Pakistani Minister for Minority Affairs thanked the prime minister, but returned to Pakistan where several weeks later he was murdered.

A Christian woman in Pakistan is persecuted and threatened with death as punishment for uttering unguarded sentiments born of a lifetime of persecution. A Pakistani woman living in Canada insists she must insult Canadian mores and values by taking her oath of citizenship while wearing a niqab so no one officiating nor anyone else becoming a citizen of Canada is able to see her face; a clear rejection of the Canadian social contract and an expression of contempt for fellow Canadians. She is given legal clearance to do just that.