Source/Credit: Indian Express
By Tanweer Fazal | January 21, 2011
Two incidents have occurred in recent times, completely unrelated, in two different countries, two different polities. Yet one thing connects Binayak Sen’s ludicrous life-imprisonment and the case of Asiya Bibi in Pakistan, which sparked Salman Taseer’s assassination and the subsequent celebration.
Taseer’s intervention was caused by concern for the rights of minorities against blasphemy laws that are an affront to religious freedom: the critical minimum for the survival of any plural society and also for a peaceful global order. That the law has no Islamic sanction or validity, and does not fulfil any divine obligation; that there are incidents cited in the prophetic tradition — incumbent upon the followers — in which he pardoned those who reserved the worst invectives for him; saying this repeatedly is crucial to put the zealots in their place, a weapon in the moderates’ armoury as they pursue the struggle within.
However the debate that the incident has generated both within and outside the world of the faithful transgresses the confines of classical texts and traditions. This is where the anti-sedition law — Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code — and the blasphemy law — Sections 295-298 of the Pakistan Penal Code — come to mirror each other. Both disrespect democratic conscience, and compete to outrage individual freedoms: one the freedom of political expression, and the other religious.
Both of them also come surprisingly close to each other in terms of the disproportionate quantum of punishment that the laws entail. The utterance by word itself, “either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo or insinuation directly or indirectly”, against the Prophet is enough of an offence in Pakistan to invite death. Similarly, mere articulation “either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise” of “hatred or attempts to bring hatred or contempt” that “excites” or can but be assumed to have “attempted to excite disaffection towards the government” is liable to be punished with a maximum of imprisonment for life. Clearly both laws make no correlation between concrete offence and recommended retribution. And it is this ambiguity that allows for the cases of Binayak Sen or Asiya Bibi. It defies all principles of justice.
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Read original post here: From a corner of a foreign court
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