Thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets—at the urging of clerics and religious groups—recently to protest Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa’s granting of bail to Mubarak Sani, an Ahmadi accused of disseminating a proscribed book in violation of the Punjab Holy Quran (Printing and Recording) (Amendment) Act, 2021.
Hailing the ruling, a spokesman for Pakistan’s Ahmadi community regretted the “one-sided negative propaganda,” stressing the judgment had protected a man from “being persecuted for his religious belief.” Unfortunately, the fervor of the protests evoked fears of past anti-blasphemy demonstrations, which had often turned violent and risked inciting the public into taking the law into their own hands for “the sanctity of Islam.” While the Supreme Court initially resisted the protests, the pressure eventually wore it down, and certain paragraphs were expunged.
There is little argument over how much damage Sections 295B and 295C, pertaining to blasphemy, have done to Pakistan’s global reputation as a civilized country. The first of these penalizes the desecration of the holy Quran with life imprisonment, while the second carries a death sentence for any insult to the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him). Adopted under the rule of Islamist military dictators Ziaul Haq, the laws aimed to facilitate the persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan after they were earlier declared non-Muslims through passage of the Second Amendment under then-prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Zia, meanwhile, also penalized Ahmadis for declaring their places of worship as “mosques” or using any epithets used by Muslims or giving a call to prayer.
But while the law’s initial aim was targeting Ahmadis, it soon came to be used for the persecution of Christians and Hindus. The banned Sipah-e-Sahaba, in particularly, would “punish” Christians accused of blasphemy by forcing evictions of their entire neighborhoods and granting right of their land to their accusers. Elements within the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan are continuing the trend today. Independent observers often point to the irrationality of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, noting they offer justification for rights violations of minorities, particularly Ahmadis. Unfortunately, anti-blasphemy protests and riots have become a source of spiritual satisfaction for many Pakistanis, who see within them a validation of their identity as a nation. This anthropological standpoint serves to explain why the country remains stuck between a rock and a hard place; unable to repeal the laws ruining its global standing but also unable to tolerate the threats to the state’s writ that they leave an opening for.