Pakistan's blasphemy laws

Derogatory remarks towards important holy figures, including the Prophet Muhammad's family and companions, are punishable by a three-year prison sentence. Ahmaddiya, a late 19th century Islamic revivalist movement, is severely circumscribed, its practitioners forbidden by law from identifying themselves or their teachings as Muslim.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | UK Desk
Source/Credit: The Journal Issue 42 | Online
By Marcus Kernohan | January 26, 2011

Unsurprisingly for a country whose population is over 95 per cent Muslim, Pakistan has some of the strictest anti-blasphemy laws in the world. The constitution entrenches Islam as the state religion, and includes strict provisions protecting Islamic tradition and culture.

Chapter 15 of the Pakistani Penal Code sets out strict penalties for religious offences: deriding the Prophet Muhammad “by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly” is punishable by death, while the defiling Islamic holy text carries a penalty of life imprisonment.

Derogatory remarks towards important holy figures, including the Prophet Muhammad's family and companions, are punishable by a three-year prison sentence. Ahmaddiya, a late 19th century Islamic revivalist movement, is severely circumscribed, its practitioners forbidden by law from identifying themselves or their teachings as Muslim.


The Pakistani government maintains that Chapter 15 is intended to protect all religious communities, and the Penal Code does include non-specific legislation criminalising discrimination or maltreatment on religious grounds, but legal protections for Islam are by far the strongest.

The Bibi case is regarded as a watershed because, although religious vigilantism is common in Pakistan, there has yet to be carried out a judicially-sanctioned execution for blasphemy under these laws.

Pakistan's blasphemy laws continue to cause substantial concern among international observers: in 2009, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed fears that the laws were open to abuse, and human rights watchdog Amnesty International noted last year that “the vaguely formulated and arbitrarily enforced blasphemy laws are typically employed to harass and persecute religious minorities.”

But public opinion in Pakistan seems to support the status quo on blasphemy offences: certainly the conservative lobby is far more vocal than the opposition. Earlier this month 50,000 people rallied in Karachi in support of the blasphemy laws, and as journalist Mahvash Waqar notes here, the liberal reformists certainly seem to be outnumbered on the domestic stage. How the Zardari government will act now remains to be seen.

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