RELIGION BULLETIN-PAKISTAN: Blasphemy Law Triggers Violence in Punjab

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Beena Sarwar

LAHORE, May 17 1998 (IPS) - Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law has sparked riots and strikes in its richest province of Punjab after the suicide last week of a widely respected Roman Catholic bishop.

On Monday, shops and markets stayed shut in response to a strike call by Islamic extremists, protesting the alleged desecration of a hoarding in Faisalabad by Christian youths angered by the death of their bishop, Dr. John Joseph, 62.

Earlier mobs had targetted shops and homes belonging to the minority community in Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s home province of Punjab, apparently in retaliation.

The violence followed the death on May 6 of Bishop Joseph of Faisalabad who shot himself through the head in the courtroom of Sahiwal town, in an act of protest against the sentencing to death of a Christian youth, Ayub Massih, for blasphemy.

Twenty five-year-old Ayub, who remains in Sahiwal jail pending an appeal, was convicted on Apr. 27 for allegedly speaking in support of Salman Rushdie, who has been in hiding since Iranian religious leaders sentenced him to death for his allegedly blasphemous novel ‘The Satanic Verses’.

The blasphemy law provides for death for anyone accused of defiling the name of the prophet Mohammed. But rights activists say that the vaguely worded Pakistani law is misused by Islamic extremists who use it against religious rivals and minorities.

Bishop Joseph had declared that charges against Ayub were made up to force 15 Christian families to drop a local land dispute, and alleged that the judge gave twice as much weight to the single accuser’s charges because he was a Muslim.

In a letter sent to Pakistan’s bishops and to newspapers a day before his death, Dr. Joseph urged the repeal of the blasphemy law, which he said was the “greatest block in the good and harmonious relations between Muslims and the religious minorities in Pakistan. In order to achieve national harmony, let us give a mighty push to this boulder before it crushes all of us.

“Now we must act strongly and in unity, Christians and Muslims, in order not only to get this death sentence suspended, but to get 295 B and C (of the Pakistan Penal Code) repealed without worrying about the sacrifices we shall have to offer; dedicated persons do not count the cost,” he wrote.

The bishop had threatened to protest Ayub’s death sentence in an “astonishing way” last month. But there was nothing to indicate that he was about to take his own life, shocked compatriots in the rights movement say.

“Dr. Joseph came to see us to discuss this case three days before he died,” said Asma Jahangir, chairperson of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) which has been in the forefront of the campaign to repeal the law. “But we had no idea he was planning something like this,” she said.