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Last Friday, a Christian woman was sentenced to death by a court in Sheikhupura, near Lahore, “after prosecutors accused her of insulting the Prophet Mohamed and promoting her own faith,” reported The UK Independent. According to reports, though, this is what actually transpired – In June 2009, Aasia Bibi had reportedly been asked to fetch water while working in the fields near Nankana Sahib, in Punjab province. Some Muslim women laborers reportedly refused to drink the water, claiming it was “unclean” because she, a Christian, had touched it, subsequently “sparking a row.” You see, Aasia Bibi felt it was in her right to speak out against this brazen prejudice that has plagued our society for decades.
According to the Telegraph, “The incident was forgotten until a few days later when Mrs. Bibi said she was set upon by a mob. The police were called and took her to a police station for her own safety.” Shahzad Kamran, of the Sharing Life Ministry Pakistan, told the news agency, “The police were under pressure from this Muslim mob, including clerics, asking for Aasia to be killed because she had spoken ill of the Prophet Mohammed. So after the police saved her life they then registered a blasphemy case against her.”
So here we are, more than a year after Aasia Bibi, a 45 year old mother of five, was held for a crime based on hearsay, prejudice, and intolerance, and she has just become “the first Christian woman to be sentenced to death for blasphemy.”
I am not sure what’s worse – that Pakistan’s blasphemy laws [sections 295 and 298 of the Penal Code] are still in effect and arbitrarily used to persecute the country’s minorities, or that Aasia Bibi’s case is only really garnering headlines now, not a year ago, when this case first transpired.
On Monday, Ali Dayan Hasan from Human Rights Watch echoed my sentiments exactly when he wrote for Dawn,
Aasia Bibi’s case is so unremarkable, so commonplace, so routine in its casually callous violation of basic rights that it did not even register in the public consciousness. And, of course, it is no secret that the belief that Christians, and non-Muslims in general, are ‘unclean’, though not propagated by any known school of Islamic thought, has widespread currency, particularly in Punjab. In all likelihood, the police felt the mob was justified. There is a thin line between faith-based lack of hygiene and blasphemy goes this logic. And it is crossed if you refuse to view your faith as filth.
The most tragic part of Aasia Bibi’s case is that it was not the first of its kind and it’s by no means the last. Last April, more than 50 houses were set on fire by an angry mob in Gojra, again in Punjab province, burning at least seven Christians alive. Much like the Ahmadi case a few weeks ago, when authorities bowed to the hysteria of a mob and made a grieving family exhume the body of their relative, the police in these situations cower to the masses. Because, you see, intolerance and prejudice in Pakistan are encased by the pristine cowardice of law. And that, over all reason and rationale, reigns supreme.
There are currently petitions circulating to free Aasia Bibi. By all means sign them. But also consider the root causes behind such a case in the first place, and why, over and over again, such laws are arbitrarily wielded to justify the persecution of Pakistan’s dwindling minorities. Contemplate why our justice system delivers no such justice. Our police do not police. Our politicians cry crocodile tears in the aftermath of such incidents, and yet do nothing to challenge the law that allowed it to happen in the first place. We turn a blind eye to prejudice because even we do not realize how entrenched it is in the very fabric of this society. Aasia Bibi has a face today because the news deemed it so, giving her case well-deserved attention. But she was faceless a year before that, when the injustice first occurred, as are the many victims of similar atrocities committed on a daily basis in Pakistan.
Sign a petition to free Aasia Bibi. But for God’s sake, also decry the laws that allowed her to be imprisoned in the first place. Where’s the petition for that?
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This is an example of barbarism and the hijacking of Pakistan which stands against such barbaric rituals.
People need to be doing something about this and thank you for bringing this out in the light.
What? This is so shocking and infuriating.
This is such an extremely UnIslamic thing in the name of Islam.
This shows the just how dangerous lack of education can be. Targeting religious minorities in Pakistan seems to be becoming a sport. It’s disgusting. Do you think local leaders will protest and prevent the sentence from taking place?
I think not, since the local leader, i.e. the clerics, are the ones who got her into this mess in the first place. The women laborers reportedly went to the cleric who then told the police that she had committed “blasphemy.”
Do we have any scape goats to blame for this kind of behavior, like we do for almost anything bad that happens in the country?
I dont think Blasphemy laws can never be taken back as long as the Constitution says Pakistan is an Islamic country.
If a leader tries to withdraw this law, then he will be considered anti-Islamic and even if this were not true, he would not dare touch it for the fear of being labeled so.
Pakistan’s bigoted laws are here to stay.
What a sick country.
This makes me feel so ashamed to call myself a Pakistani.
im puzzeled to see such disturbing behaviour towards minorities, whereas at the same time so many of the same pakistanis dream desperately go to europe or Amercia ( clearly christian countries) where they eat and drink among christians….
Miriam,
It’s a major contradiction, and I oftentimes have many American friends asking if there would be that same prejudice towards them. I always answer no, since the intolerance and prejudice towards Pakistan’s Christians, particularly in Punjab, seems to stem from the residuals of the caste system. From my understand, many Christians from this community were once Hindu untouchables who converted to Christianity some time ago. This fact is significant because it further shows how the intolerance towards this group is NOT based on Islam at all, but on caste bias. It’s why people refuse to eat from a plate after a Christian from this community has touched it, because they think they are “unclean”, or in Aasia Bibi’s case why they refused to drink the water she fetched. It’s eerily similar to behavior towards the untouchable caste, and it’s shameful.
At first, I was surprised how fast Pakistan has changed in last 10-15 years and then I recalled everything I had known about Pakistan while living there & I realized that this was bound to happen. We kept our masses uneducated and we forced them to distort to a point where they are all numb to logic but will blindly rise to the smell of blood. We (the few elites) have made us (the uneducated masses) into monsters. This is becoming an everyday thing, who cares about a 45 year old non muslim woman when we don’t even care about 2 year old mulsim children & feed them fake medicine or poisonous milk.
When we preach in Islamic context how unimportant life is, yet we fail to understand the context of it. We accept our very well planned organized death from years of misery by a sudden heart attack and call it fate. Ladies & gentleman “Close the plant, The experiment gone terribly wrong ..”
I love Pakistan, we just need to find the secret code that will break the spell on the masses and wake them up again.”
As terrible as this is, I also think its ridiculous that local courts have the power to dish out death sentences at will. There should be some sort of amendment to Pakistan’s penal code or judicial practices that takes away the power of lower courts to sentence people to death.
Actually, Pakistan needs to get rid of the death sentence altogether, but in the absence of such a measure, we should let only those in the apex court of the land decide on such a grave sentence.
Which brings me to my 3rd point. Anoop is right in pointing out that “If a leader tries to withdraw this law, then he will be considered anti-Islamic and even if this were not true, he would not dare touch it for the fear of being labeled so.” I don’t expect our coward leaders to risk their reputations to stand up for the right of the common man (after all that was just a campaign promise!) but there should certainly be a constitutional amendment removing ‘life imprisonment’ or ‘death sentences’ for people accused of blasphemy. At most it should be a slap on the wrist.
There are a Article over Asia Bibi on CNN. A poor mother who did not kill anyone, injured or stohl anything but said something now face death penalty. More than 4500 viewers commented from different parts of the world and most of this are dedicated against Mohammad and Islam which are unreadble or unthinkable for me as a muslim. Can we bare them not to speak look like or can we hang all of them?
yes, we have to hang all of them if we are true muslims, and if we cannot hang them then atleast try not to file petitions on their acts against Prophet (PBUH).
why you guys are not filing petition on Kashmir issue, why dont you file petitions then Israils kill innocent muslims in Palatine..
I feel shame to be a Pakistani it is a nation of animals..
America is behind this. She was in punjab because she is secretly working with the CIA and is actually an Indian!!!!!!
It is hard to read this and have a comment that is actually meaningful to be honest. The gut says “youve got to be kidding” and then the reality of Pakistan sets in and then I think “wow somehow she didnt get hanged or stoned”
We as a society are intollerant to anything and anyone that doesnt believe in majority point of views. Be it related to religion, politics, sexuality, etc. whatever topic you choose i guarantee that it will be extrememly hard to find too many people who are middle of the road. There will be many who pretend, but mostly we are a super conservative right wing thinking nation. That to me is the issue in regards to why laws such as this still exist in pakistan. We want to pretend to be more center than we actually are and hence no one having the balls to stand up and say “this is a ridiculous law, we need to get rid of it” – (before everyone gets their panties in a bunch let me clarify that i think that is true for even here in america)
I also find it sad that when I read something like this it doesnt really affect me any more, it garners the “now what happened” reaction. Pakistan is in a state of turmoil in so many shapes ways and form that it is hard to find sympathy for just one person when hundreds are dying every single day. (again people relax, i am not cold hearted, just saying read the last 20 posts on just this blog, besides the goatie one they are all of death and turmoil of some sort)
Come on UNHRC- where have you been for the last year? or 60 😉
Can you please write something about another pet goat or something?
how convenient kalsoon that u blame the bigoted mentality of ur countrymen on caste bias, arent both islam and christianity supposed to be above casteism isnt that the reason why ur ancestors converted to escape the caste bias, please dont give excuses for the deficiencies of ur religion, they accused her because she was not muslim period and that they knew they could get away with it , so dont add ur own flawed analysis to it
I’m not even going to dignify your remark with a proper response, except to say that biases, ALL of them, are complex and can’t just be blamed on a black-and-white explanation.
[…] Lakhani, on her blog Changing Up Pakistan, writes that the laws not only institutionalize religious discrimination, they provide a […]