The viciousness of religious intolerance haunts Pakistan

These laws, though created in the name of Islam, really have no place in Islam and hardly any Muslim-majority country applies them. Pakistan is the exception to this rule. Clerics often use implementation of such laws to gain quick fame and popularity among their followers at the expense of defenseless people like Noreen.

Pretests against proposed amendment to the blasphemy law

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: The Daily Star :: Lebanon News
By Muqtedar Khan | January 24, 2011

Once again the viciousness that haunts Muslim communities has manifested itself in the form of the recent brutal killing of a Pakistani provincial governor, Salman Taseer, on Jan. 4. The assassin, who was Taseer’s bodyguard, claimed he had killed Taseer because the governor was opposed to Pakistan’s blasphemy law. The killing will surely silence many moderate voices in Pakistan and further intimidate the government in Islamabad.

The latest crisis began when a Christian Pakistani woman by the name of Aasia Noreen was accused of blasphemy, with witnesses claiming she insulted the Prophet Mohammad. A court in Pakistan, invoking the nation’s blasphemy law, sentenced Noreen to death. Taseer, who was publicly seeking a pardon for Noreen, came under threat from some religious leaders for doing such a thing. He was also taken to task for standing up for other minorities, such as the Ahmadis, a Muslim denomination which is often persecuted for its unorthodox beliefs.


Two weeks ago, thousands of people, instigated by religious parties and imams, took to the streets to demand that Noreen be executed. And although human rights activists and many Muslim scholars came out and condemned this development, the government was afraid to pardon her and repeal the law, especially after the killing of Taseer.

Two issues were once again highlighted by this episode. The first pertained to the issue of capital punishment for crimes of speech and thought that are labeled as blasphemy, a punishment that runs against the Islamic ideals of compassion and mercy. In many cases, the blasphemy law has been misused by Muslims to exact revenge against religious minorities and other fellow Muslims by falsely accusing them of blasphemy. The frequency and blatancy with which these laws have been abused are justification enough for their repeal.

These laws, though created in the name of Islam, really have no place in Islam and hardly any Muslim-majority country applies them. Pakistan is the exception to this rule. Clerics often use implementation of such laws to gain quick fame and popularity among their followers at the expense of defenseless people like Noreen.

The second issue is the increasingly worrisome trend in some Muslim communities of labeling as inauthentic any hadith (which are the actions or sayings of the Prophet Mohammad) in which tolerance, compassion or mercy is shown, while those few in which murder and violence is advocated, albeit in a specific context, are the only ones considered authentic. Some Muslims even react with disbelief and immediately demand the source when any story about the Prophet Mohammad’s compassion is mentioned. It seems for some of us, compassion and mercy have become un-Islamic virtues.

For example, according to a very popular hadith, a non-Muslim woman used to throw garbage on the Prophet Mohammad whenever he passed by her house. Neither he nor any of his companions took any action against her. One day, when she did not appear as usual to throw garbage at the Prophet, he went into her home and asked after her.

Throughout his life, the Prophet Mohammad was insulted by his enemies, but never did he order them killed to avenge every insult. Indeed, the Koran even tells of such instances and does not call for the death of those aggressors. Stories such as these, that emphasize the Prophet Muhammad’s compassion and mercy, are part of Muslim folklore, music, children’s stories and kitchen table conversations.

The most important and often-emphasized attribute of God in the Koran is “rahmah,” or mercy, and given the uncertainty surrounding the authenticity of many hadiths, I would hope that Muslims become more responsive and open to those who advocate mercy, compassion and tolerance, and more critical of those who encourage violence, murder and hate. After all, tolerance and compassion can have no disastrous consequences; it is hate and violence, however, that often trigger unending cycles of the same.

The Koran says that God sent the Prophet Mohammad as a mercy to all of humanity. How can we convince someone like Aasia Noreen in Pakistan that this is indeed true?

Muqtedar Khan is an associate professor at the University of Delaware and a fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. His website is www.ijtihad.org. THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with the Common Ground News Service (www.commongroundnews.org).



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