tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/blasphemy-in-pakistan-38289/articlesBlasphemy in Pakistan – The Conversation2024-03-26T18:35:25Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2248412024-03-26T18:35:25Z2024-03-26T18:35:25ZPakistan’s blasphemy laws continue to cause violence<p>The Supreme Court of Pakistan recently <a href="https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1160999-mubarak-sani-case-sc-accepts-plea-for-verdict-revision-issues-notices-for-26th">drew the ire</a> of religious parties and anti-blasphemy groups for granting bail to a man accused of blasphemy. The court ruled against the retroactive implementation of a law that bans the distribution of an <a href="https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/faq/ahmadiyya-movement-pakistan">Ahmadiyya exegesis of the Qur'an</a>.</p>
<p>Mubarik Ahmad Sani was arrested on Jan. 7, 2023 and charged with distributing the book in 2019. However, the ban on its distribution was imposed in 2021. The court granted relief to Sani, who had been incarcerated for 13 months. <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1812607">The court observed</a> that Sani should not have been arrested for an act which was not an offence at the time. </p>
<p>The court’s decision did not go down well with some religious conservatives. The government of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province, submitted a <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1816694">review petition against the decision</a>, and a man in the city of Rawalpindi was <a href="https://tribune.com.pk/story/2457292/man-arrested-for-launching-threatening-campaign-against-cjp-isa">arrested for inciting violence</a> against the chief justice on social media. </p>
<h2>History of blasphemy laws</h2>
<p>Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210521170530id_/https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/4219/1/THE-INDIAN-PENAL-CODE-1860.pdf">built on the foundations</a> laid in the Indian Penal Code of 1860 during <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/British-raj">British colonial rule</a>. These laws were revised over time in Pakistan, with significant amendments introduced during the dictatorship of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mohammad-Zia-ul-Haq">General Zia-ul-Haq</a> in the 1970s and ‘80s. In efforts to strengthen his unconstitutional rule, Zia-ul-Haq instrumentalized Islam and introduced several laws that promoted radical forms of Islam, stifled religious freedom and contributed to the spread of religious and sectarian violence. </p>
<p>Anti-blasphemy laws in Pakistan revolve primarily around remarks about the Prophet Muhammad. <a href="https://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/legislation/1860/actXLVof1860.html">The law states</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While various people have been charged with blasphemy, Pakistan’s Ahmadiyya community in particular has <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/26/ahmadi-persecution-pakistan-blasphemy-islam">repeatedly been targeted</a>. Sections 298-B and 298-C of the <a href="https://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/legislation/1860/actXLVof1860.html">Pakistan Penal Code</a> specifically prohibit the Ahmadiyya community from representing themselves as Muslims, calling their places of worship mosques and reciting the call to prayer.</p>
<p>Exonerating people charged with blasphemy, especially members of minority communities, has historically faced tough resistance. In 1997, a <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/03/02/pakistans-blasphemy-laws-a-history-of-violence/">Lahore High Court judge</a> was shot dead in his office for acquitting three Christians in a blasphemy case. In 2011, a Christian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/02/pakistan-minister-shot-dead-islamabad">federal minister</a> and a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-12111831">provincial governor</a> were killed for demanding a review of the controversial blasphemy laws.</p>
<p>In 2018, violence erupted when a Christian woman, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/31/asia-bibi-verdict-pakistan-court-overturns-blasphemy-death-sentence">Asia Bibi</a>, was acquitted by the Supreme Court. Bibi had been given a death sentence by the Lahore High Court on blasphemy charges. Fearing harm from anti-blasphemy activists, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/5/8/aasia-bibi-christian-acquitted-of-blasphemy-leaves-pakistan">she fled to Canada in 2019</a>. </p>
<h2>Encouraging violence</h2>
<p>The promotion of anti-blasphemy laws and harsh sentences has resulted in <a href="https://crss.pk/blasphemy-cases-in-pakistan-1947-2021/">hundreds of arrests</a> and the killing of at least 90 people in vigilante violence since Pakistan’s independence in 1947.</p>
<p><a href="https://pewrsr.ch/2Y7MO44">A 2019 Pew Research Centre report</a> on religious restrictions placed Pakistan among the countries with the highest levels of restrictions on religion. The strict social restrictions have often manifested in <a href="https://aje.io/6hkbez">vigilante violence</a>.</p>
<p>The glorification of violence towards alleged acts of blasphemy appears to have become a norm in Pakistan. The graves of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/12/salmaan-taseer-case-harks-back-to-1929-killing-of-hindu-publisher">Ilm Deen</a>, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-2006-05-13-voa19/312718.html">Amir Cheema</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/01/funeral-pakistani-mumtaz-qadri-executed-salmaan-taseer">Mumtaz Qadri</a>, for example, have become regularly visited shrines.
Deen was hanged in 1929 for murdering the Hindu publisher of a controversial book about Muhammad. His story is included in school textbooks. </p>
<p>Cheema attempted to murder a German newspaper editor in 2006 for publishing cartoons of Muhammad and died in the custody of German police. Qadri was executed for killing the governor of Punjab in 2011 because the governor had spoken in defense of Bibi.</p>
<p>Although the Qur'an does not command Muslims to punish blasphemy, the supporters of anti-blasphemy laws rely on rigid interpretations by scholars to justify their acts. </p>
<p>The petition by the Punjab provincial government for the Supreme Court to review its decision, and the continued threat of violence, all highlight the complicated challenges faced in Pakistan regarding the freedom of religion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224841/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Azmat Abbas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pakistan’s laws against blasphemy have been used to bring cases against numerous people over the years, and in particular, the country’s religious minorities.Azmat Abbas, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Religion and Culture, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1064872018-11-08T11:49:21Z2018-11-08T11:49:21ZBlasphemy law is repealed in Ireland, enforced in Pakistan – and a problem in many Christian and Muslim countries<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244145/original/file-20181106-74787-1n0dk78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pakistani religious groups protest against a Supreme Court decision that acquitted Asia Bibi, who was accused of blasphemy, in Islamabad, Pakistan.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Pakistan-Blasphemy/d2392ec56fe24adfb0aa2a72e7df1b82/12/0">AP Photo/B.K. Bangash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The citizens of Ireland voted recently, in a nationwide referendum, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/27/ireland-votes-to-oust-blasphemy-ban-from-constitution">to remove a clause</a> from their constitution that had made blasphemy a criminal offense. </p>
<p>Ireland’s now-defunct Defamation Act of 2009 prohibited the <a href="http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2009/act/31/section/36/enacted/en/html#sec36">“publication or utterance of blasphemous matter.”</a> Just last year, in fact, Irish police <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/may/07/stephen-fry-investigated-by-irish-police-for-alleged-blasphemy">opened a brief investigation</a> into whether comedian Stephen Fry had broken the law when he described God as “capricious, mean-minded, stupid” and “an utter maniac” during a televised interview. The case was closed, however, as the police said they had been <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/stephen-fry-blasphemy-ireland-probe-investigation-dropped-police-gardai-not-enough-outrage-a7725116.html">“unable to find a substantial number of outraged people.”</a> </p>
<p>The overturning of Ireland’s blasphemy law stands in stark contrast to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-06/pakistan-blasphemy-lawyer-flees-to-the-netherlands/10468072">recent news</a> out of Pakistan – where the release from prison of Asia Bibi, a <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-pope-francis-choice-of-a-pakistani-cardinal-means-for-christians-of-the-country-97604">Christian</a> woman, accused of blasphemy, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2018/oct/31/asia-bibi-protests-erupt-in-pakistan-after-blasphemy-conviction-overturned-video">has led to widespread protests</a>. In Indonesia, too, many people <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/10/25/human-cost-indonesias-blasphemy-law">have been jailed</a> for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/20/ousted-jakarta-governor-basuki-tjahaja-purnama-jail-blasphemy-indonesia">speaking irreverently against Islam</a>. </p>
<p>Despite its recent defeat, Ireland’s 2009 blasphemy law is an important reminder that laws against blasphemy have hardly been unique to the Muslim world – even in the 21st century. </p>
<h2>Understanding the Muslim world</h2>
<p>As of 2014, according to the Pew Research Center, nearly <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/29/which-countries-still-outlaw-apostasy-and-blasphemy/">one-fifth of European countries</a> and a third of countries in the Americas, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150717041904/http:/laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/page-155.html#h-89">notably Canada</a>, have laws against blasphemy.</p>
<p>In my research for <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/blasphemous-modernism-9780190627560?cc=us&lang=en&">a literary study of blasphemy</a>, I found that these laws may differ in many respects from their more well-known counterparts in Muslim nations, but they also share some common features with them.</p>
<p>In particular, they’re all united in regarding blasphemy as a form of “injury” – even as they disagree about what, exactly, blasphemy injures.</p>
<p>In the Muslim world, such injured parties are often a lot easier to find. Cultural anthropologist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/us/saba-mahmood-dead.html">Saba Mahmood</a> said that many devout Muslims <a href="http://fordhampress.com/index.php/is-critique-secuar-paperback.html">perceive blasphemy</a> as an almost physical injury: an intolerable offense that hurts both God himself and the whole community of the faithful.</p>
<p>For Mahmood that perception was brought powerfully home in 2005, when a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Interviewing a number of Muslims at the time, Mahmood was “struck,” <a href="http://fordhampress.com/index.php/is-critique-secuar-paperback.html">she wrote</a>, “by the sense of personal loss” they conveyed. People she interviewed were very clear on this point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The idea that we should just get over this hurt makes me so mad.”</p>
<p>“I would have felt less wounded if the object of ridicule were my own parents.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The intensity of this “hurt,” “wounding” and “ridicule” helps to explain how blasphemy can remain a <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/02/pakistan-shrine-murder-blasphemy-170206103344830.html">capital offense</a> in a theocratic state like Pakistan. The punishment is tailored to the enormity of the perceived crime.</p>
<h2>Blasphemy and Christians</h2>
<p>That may sound like a foreign concept to secular ears. The reality, though, is that most Western blasphemy laws are rooted in a similar logic of religious offense. </p>
<p>As historians like <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/01/obituaries/01levy.html">Leonard Levy</a> and <a href="https://www.brookes.ac.uk/hpc/staff-and-students/academic-staff/?uid=p0070929&op=full">David Nash</a> have <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807845158/blasphemy/">documented</a>, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/blasphemy-in-the-christian-world-9780199255160?cc=us&lang=en&">these laws</a> – dating, mostly, from the 1200s to the early 1800s – were designed to protect Christian beliefs and practices from the sort of “hurt” and “ridicule” that animates Islamic blasphemy laws today. But as the West became increasingly secular, religious injury gradually lost much of its power to provoke. By the mid-20th century, most Western blasphemy laws had become virtually dead letters.</p>
<p>That’s certainly true of the U.S., where such laws remain <a href="http://www.bu.edu/ilj/files/2014/05/Aswad-US-and-Blaspemy.pdf">“on the books” in six states</a> but haven’t been invoked <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807845158/blasphemy/">since at least the early 1970s</a>. They’re now widely held to be <a href="http://www.bu.edu/ilj/files/2014/05/Aswad-US-and-Blaspemy.pdf">nullified by the First Amendment.</a></p>
<p>Yet looking beyond the American context, one will find that blasphemy laws are hardly obsolete throughout the West. Instead, they’re acquiring new uses for the 21st century.</p>
<h2>Religious offense in a secular world</h2>
<p>Consider the case of a Danish man who was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/world/europe/denmark-quran-burning.html">charged with blasphemy</a>, in February 2017, for burning a Quran and for posting a video of the act online.</p>
<p>In the past, Denmark’s blasphemy law had only ever been enforced to punish anti-Christian expression. (It was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/world/europe/denmark-quran-burning.html">last used in 1946</a>.) Today it serves to highlight an ongoing trend: In an increasingly pluralist, multicultural West, blasphemy laws find fresh purpose in policing intolerance between religious communities. </p>
<p>In other words, the real question for the 21st century has not been whether blasphemy counts as a crime. Instead it’s been about who, or what – God or the state, religion or pluralism – is the injured party. Instead of preventing injury to God, these laws now seek to prevent injury to the social fabric of avowedly secular states. </p>
<p>That’s true not only of the West’s centuries-old blasphemy laws but also of more recent ones. Ireland’s Defamation Act, for instance, <a href="http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2009/act/31/section/36/enacted/en/html#sec36">targeted any person</a> who “utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion.”</p>
<p>With its emphasis on the “outrage” blasphemy may cause among “any religion,” the measure was clearly aimed less at protecting the sacred than at preventing intolerance among diverse religious groups.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167387/original/file-20170501-17307-tfg2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167387/original/file-20170501-17307-tfg2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167387/original/file-20170501-17307-tfg2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167387/original/file-20170501-17307-tfg2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167387/original/file-20170501-17307-tfg2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167387/original/file-20170501-17307-tfg2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167387/original/file-20170501-17307-tfg2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustrations of prophecy: particularly the evening and morning visions of Daniel, and the apocalyptical visions of John (1840).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/126377022@N07/14577102519">Internet Archive Book Images. Image from page 371.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The law itself caused outrage of a different sort, however. Advocacy organizations, such as <a href="http://atheist.ie/">Atheist Ireland</a>, mounted fierce opposition to the law and to the example it set internationally. In late 2009, for instance, Pakistan <a href="http://atheist.ie/2016/01/irish-blasphemy-laws-are-five-years-old-today/">borrowed the exact language</a> of the Irish law in its own proposed statement on blasphemy to the United Nations’ Human Rights Council. </p>
<p>Thus, Atheist Ireland <a href="http://atheist.ie/campaigns/blasphemy-law/">warned</a> on its website that “Islamic States can now point to a modern pluralist Western State passing a new blasphemy law in the 21st century.” </p>
<h2>Blasphemy in modernity</h2>
<p>That warning resonates with the common Western view of blasphemy as an antiquated concept, a medieval throwback with no relevance to “modern,” “developed” societies. Atheist Ireland’s chairperson, Michael Nugent, drew on this tradition when he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/27/ireland-votes-to-oust-blasphemy-ban-from-constitution">touted the significance</a> of the recent referendum victory: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It means that we’ve got rid of a medieval crime from our constitution that should never have been there.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As Columbia University professor <a href="http://english.columbia.edu/people/profile/412">Gauri Viswanathan</a> puts it, <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6250.html">blasphemy is often used</a> “to separate cultures of modernity from those of premodernity.” Starting from the assumption that blasphemy can exist only in a backward society, critics point to blasphemy as evidence of the backwardness of entire religious cultures.</p>
<p>I would argue, however, that this eurocentric view is growing increasingly difficult to sustain. If anything, blasphemy has in recent years enjoyed a resurgence in many corners of the supposedly secular West – including <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/blasphemy-laws-reign-many-muslim-countries/3844962.html">prosecutions</a> in Austria, Finland, Germany, Greece, Switzerland and Turkey. Perhaps the fate of Ireland’s Defamation Act forecasts a broader reversal of that trend. </p>
<p><em>This piece incorporates elements of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/blasphemy-isnt-just-a-problem-in-the-muslim-world-75026">earlier article published</a> on May 1, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106487/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steve Pinkerton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There has been outrage over the release of a Christian woman accused of blasphemy in Pakistan. An expert explains how blasphemy laws are hardly obsolete throughout the West.Steve Pinkerton, Lecturer in English, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1007972018-08-08T10:36:22Z2018-08-08T10:36:22ZWho are Pakistan’s Ahmadis and why haven’t they voted in 30 years<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230931/original/file-20180807-191013-j19bb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A portrait of Imran Khan, whose party won the recent elections, in Islamabad, Pakistan.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Anjum Naveed</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pakistani cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan, <a href="http://www.newindianexpress.com/world/2018/aug/04/imran-khan-may-take-oath-as-prime-minister-of-pakistan-on-august-14-1853248.html">is all set to be the country’s new prime minister</a>. His party emerged the single largest in recent elections.</p>
<p>It is only for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/26/imran-khan-claims-victory-in-pakistan-elections">the second time</a> in the 71-year history of this second largest Muslim majority country that a democratically elected government, will transfer power to another after completing its full term. The nation’s <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/310667/pakistan-on-the-brink-by-ahmed-rashid/9780143122838/">military has intervened</a> repeatedly to remove leaders and has directly controlled the country for about half of its history.</p>
<p>And so this recent milestone in Pakistan’s democracy has <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1417636">elated many citizens</a>. However, one community boycotted the recent elections, as they have for over three decades: the Ahmadi, a religious minority. </p>
<p>Who are the Ahmadis and what does their boycott tell about the role religion has played in Pakistan’s nationalist politics? </p>
<h2>The Ahmadi of Pakistan</h2>
<p>The origin of the Ahmadi community goes back to the British-ruled India of 1889. At the time, in the province of Punjab (a region that would later be split between an independent India and Pakistan), a Muslim religious leader, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, became disenchanted with what <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=807412">he viewed as Muslim decadence</a> that allowed for the humiliating experience of foreign rule.</p>
<p>Like <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/religion-science-and-empire-9780195393019?cc=us&lang=en&">many Indians</a>, he wondered what needed to change in order to overcome the invaders.</p>
<p>Many European missionaries wanted to “free” Indians – both Muslims and Hindus – of what they <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=3193">characterized as their religious ignorance</a> by bringing them to the “truth” of Christian traditions.</p>
<p>With the British government’s consent, some traveled through cities and rural areas <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/religion-science-and-empire-9780195393019?cc=us&lang=en&_">to publicly denounce</a> Islamic and Hindu traditions, while others published pamphlets doing so.</p>
<p>To restore the wholesomeness of Islamic traditions that had once influenced much of South Asia, Ghulam Ahmad reinterpreted branches of Islamic thought. He broadcast the message of reform through his prolific writing. Most prominently, he claimed to be both <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Prophecy_Continuous.html?id=rv8EAAAACAAJ">the Messiah and a prophet</a>.</p>
<p>Most Muslims believe that Isa, or Jesus – whom they recognize as a prophet akin to Muhammad – will return as a Messiah, a figure expected to prepare the world for <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Prophecy_Continuous.html?id=rv8EAAAACAAJ">Judgment Day</a>. In contrast, Ghulam Ahmad claimed to displace Isa in this role and announced that the end times were near.</p>
<p>What was more problematic, particularly to Islamic scholars, was his claim as a prophet. Most Muslims understand Muhammad as the “seal of the prophets,” the last sent by God. The Quran represents the final revelation offered to humanity by God. Ghulam Ahmad addressed these concerns by <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=807412">claiming to be a lesser type of prophet</a>. </p>
<p>His message attracted growing numbers of followers among Muslims struggling to deal with the realities of British rule. Many were drawn partly to his <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=807412">strident criticism</a> of Christian missionaries and Hindu activists who denigrated them. In 1889 he inaugurated a small group called the Jamaat-i Ahmadiyya (the Organization of Ahmad), that <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=807412">helped spread</a> his message. </p>
<p>Although some Ahmadis later turned away from their leader’s most disputed assertions, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Islam_and_the_Ahmadiyya_Jama%CA%BBat.html?id=yDIqAQAAMAAJ">the Jamaat-i Ahmadiyya held steadfast</a> to his claim to prophethood. This group viewed him as nothing less than the Messiah who had returned to help humanity as it faced its end. </p>
<p>They made Rabwah, a town in Pakistan’s province of Punjab, their headquarters. </p>
<p>During Ghulam Ahmad’s life, Islamic scholars expressed disapproval with other scholars or individual Ahmadis. However, in 1947, after Pakistan was established as a separate Muslim homeland, some Islamic scholars publicly attacked the theology of the Ahmadis. Various politicians harnessed the controversy to their nationalist politics. </p>
<h2>The politics of defining the true Muslim</h2>
<p>The first major expression of anti-Ahmadi sentiment <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/788358">targeted an Ahmadi, Chaudhry Zafarullah Khan,</a> who held the foreign minister’s post in 1953. </p>
<p>Some Muslims circulated rumors that Ahmadis proselytized among Muslims and represented a Western-supported conspiracy. This spurred riots throughout the country in 1953 that led to six deaths. Subsequently the government <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/788358">removed all Ahmadis, including Zafarullah Khan</a> from prominent official posts.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230934/original/file-20180807-191038-1otmyr3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230934/original/file-20180807-191038-1otmyr3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230934/original/file-20180807-191038-1otmyr3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230934/original/file-20180807-191038-1otmyr3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230934/original/file-20180807-191038-1otmyr3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230934/original/file-20180807-191038-1otmyr3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230934/original/file-20180807-191038-1otmyr3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A minaret of the Ahmadi’s Garhi Shahu mosque.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/K.M.Chaudary</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the next two decades, the campaign against the Ahmadi proceeded haltingly, staggering between occasional local tensions and evolving political agendas.</p>
<p>In 1974, however, the town of Rabwah became the epicenter of antagonism. Following riots targeting Ahmadis in many parts of Pakistan, Prime Minister Zulfikar Bhutto – among the least religiously inclined of Pakistan’s leaders – bowed to Islamist pressure to make constitutional amendments <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/788358">declaring Ahmadis as non-Muslims</a>.</p>
<p>Later in 1984, legislation <a href="https://herald.dawn.com/news/1152871">prohibited Ahmadi from proselytizing</a> or even professing their beliefs.<br>
Matters worsened a year later when the government divided Pakistan’s electorate into “Muslim” and “non-Muslim.” This required voters to declare whether they accepted Muhammad as the final prophet. Ahmadi who declared themselves Muslim <a href="https://tribune.com.pk/story/980272/beleaguered-community-jamaat-i-ahmadiyya-to-stay-away-from-forthcoming-polls/">faced penalties.</a></p>
<p>The bottom line is since 1985 most <a href="http://newsweekpakistan.com/pakistans-ahmadis-to-boycott-elections/">have not participated in an election</a>. Casting a vote would require them to <a href="https://tribune.com.pk/story/538686/franchise-ahmadis-still-out-of-electoral-process/">explicitly denounce themselves as non-Muslims</a>, which would have its own consequences. </p>
<h2>Nationalism’s double-edge</h2>
<p>What is important to understand is that the roots of the current electoral conflict do not inherently lie either in Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s message nor the Ahmadiyya community. </p>
<p>The conflict emerges from <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-republic-unsettled">an ideology of nationalism</a> that inherently promotes a sense of belonging in its citizens, at the risk of exclusion of certain “outsiders.” </p>
<p>As Britain abandoned South Asia in 1947, Pakistan’s founders established a secular state meant to protect Muslims as a separate homeland from the political threats they saw in a Hindu-majority India. Certain Islamist political groups and politicians <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?content=reviews&isbn=9780674979833">combined religious identity, language and symbols to foster national unity</a>. </p>
<p>Specific domestic religious groups <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/10/in-pakistan-most-say-ahmadis-are-not-muslim/">were targeted</a> as the enemy of the public in order to garner popular support. In 2011, <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/10/in-pakistan-most-say-ahmadis-are-not-muslim/">Pakistan was ranked at the top</a> on Pew Research Center’s index on social hostilities involving religion. The Ahmadis were one targeted group. </p>
<p>Just as the Trump administration <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538107379/Islamophobia-and-Anti-Muslim-Sentiment-Picturing-the-Enemy-Second-Edition">questions the loyalty of Muslim-Americans</a> and simultaneously defines “true” Americans, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/310667/pakistan-on-the-brink-by-ahmed-rashid/9780143122838/">increasing numbers of Pakistani politicians and Islamists </a> after 1947 portrayed the Ahmadis negatively in order to project themselves as protectors of “true” Muslim Pakistanis. </p>
<p>By 2012, <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2012/08/09/the-worlds-muslims-unity-and-diversity-5-religious-identity/">only 7 percent of Pakistanis</a> considered Ahmadis as Muslims.</p>
<h2>Target of attacks</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230933/original/file-20180807-191013-fw0psb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230933/original/file-20180807-191013-fw0psb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230933/original/file-20180807-191013-fw0psb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230933/original/file-20180807-191013-fw0psb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230933/original/file-20180807-191013-fw0psb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230933/original/file-20180807-191013-fw0psb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230933/original/file-20180807-191013-fw0psb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Ahmadi mosque in the eastern city of Sialkot, Pakistan, demolished by extremists in May 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Shahid Ikram</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this environment the Ahmadis, <a href="https://tribune.com.pk/story/1652980/1-ihc-seeks-ahmadis-population-figures-since-1947/">representing perhaps 0.2 percent</a> of Pakistan’s <a href="http://www.pbs.gov.pk/content/provisional-summary-results-6th-population-and-housing-census-2017-0">208 million</a> population, continue to struggle. They have been been the targets not only of electoral discrimination but also of <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1409714">vandalism against their places of worship</a>. They have been accused of <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1363201">blasphemy</a>, and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-election-ahmadis/the-town-that-doesnt-vote-pakistans-ahmadis-say-forced-to-abstain-idUSKBN1KB079">laws have made it illegal</a> for them to recite the Quran. They are also not <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-election-ahmadis/the-town-that-doesnt-vote-pakistans-ahmadis-say-forced-to-abstain-idUSKBN1KB079">allowed to have Islamic inscriptions on headstones</a>, or even call their places of worship “mosques.”</p>
<p>Many have despaired of finding acceptance in their national homeland and <a href="http://www.worldpress.org/link.cfm?http://www.thefridaytimes.com/">emigrated to other nations.</a> In Pakistan, as the recent election shows, they continue to struggle with a nationalist politics of exclusion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100797/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Gottschalk does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A religious minority of Pakistan, the Ahmadis have been boycotting elections for decades. Casting a vote would require that they denounce themselves as ‘non-Muslims.’Peter Gottschalk, Professor of Religion, Wesleyan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/750262017-05-02T02:37:18Z2017-05-02T02:37:18ZBlasphemy isn’t just a problem in the Muslim world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167385/original/file-20170501-17281-jjxivz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Stained glass window depicting a heretic in the Cathedral of Saint Rumbold in Mechelen, Belgium.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/512300215?size=huge_jpg">Heretic image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ireland’s state police recently concluded their investigation of comedian Stephen Fry, who stood accused of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/may/07/stephen-fry-investigated-by-irish-police-for-alleged-blasphemy">criminal blasphemy</a>. </p>
<p>In an interview that aired on Irish public television, Fry had described God as “capricious, mean-minded, stupid,” and “an utter maniac.” And Ireland’s Defamation Act of 2009 clearly prohibits the <a href="http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2009/act/31/section/36/enacted/en/html#sec36">“publication or utterance of blasphemous matter.”</a> Yet on May 8 the police closed the case, explaining they’d been <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/stephen-fry-blasphemy-ireland-probe-investigation-dropped-police-gardai-not-enough-outrage-a7725116.html">“unable to find a substantial number of outraged people.”</a> </p>
<p>The mild resolution to this incident stands in stark contrast to <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/uk-pakistan-facebook-religion-idUSKBN16Z2GB">recent news</a> <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-blasphemy-idUSKBN17F1ZL">out of Pakistan</a> – which has seen a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/pakistan-blasphemy-int-idUSKBN17M1NS">spike in blasphemy-related violence</a> – and Indonesia, where the outgoing governor of Jakarta was just sentenced to two years in prison for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/20/ousted-jakarta-governor-basuki-tjahaja-purnama-jail-blasphemy-indonesia">speaking irreverently against Islam</a>.</p>
<p>The Irish case is also a timely reminder, though, that anti-blasphemy laws are hardly unique to the Muslim world. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/29/which-countries-still-outlaw-apostasy-and-blasphemy/">one-fifth of European countries</a> and a third of countries in the Americas, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150717041904/http:/laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/page-155.html#h-89">notably Canada</a>, have laws against blasphemy.</p>
<p>In my research for a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/blasphemous-modernism-9780190627560?cc=us&lang=en&">new literary study of blasphemy</a>, I found that these laws may differ in many respects from their more well-known counterparts in Muslim nations, but they also share some common features with them.</p>
<p>In particular, they’re all united in regarding blasphemy as a form of “injury” – even as they disagree about what, exactly, blasphemy injures.</p>
<h2>The hurt of blasphemy</h2>
<p>In dropping their investigation of Stephen Fry, for example, the Irish police noted that the original complainant does not consider himself personally offended. Therefore they’ve <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/stephen-fry-blasphemy-ireland-probe-investigation-dropped-police-gardai-not-enough-outrage-a7725116.html">determined</a> he is “not an injured party.”</p>
<p>In the Muslim world, such injured parties are often a lot easier to find. Cultural anthropologist <a href="http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/people/saba-mahmood">Saba Mahmood</a> says that many devout Muslims <a href="http://fordhampress.com/index.php/is-critique-secuar-paperback.html">perceive blasphemy</a> as an almost physical injury: an intolerable offense that hurts both God himself and the whole community of the faithful.</p>
<p>For Mahmood that perception was brought powerfully home in 2005, when a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Interviewing a number of Muslims at the time, Mahmood was “struck,” <a href="http://fordhampress.com/index.php/is-critique-secuar-paperback.html">she writes</a>, “by the sense of personal loss” they conveyed. People she interviewed were very clear on this point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The idea that we should just get over this hurt makes me so mad.”</p>
<p>“I would have felt less wounded if the object of ridicule were my own parents.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The intensity of this “hurt,” “wounding” and “ridicule” helps to explain how blasphemy can remain a <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/02/pakistan-shrine-murder-blasphemy-170206103344830.html">capital offense</a> in a theocratic state like Pakistan. The punishment is tailored to the enormity of the perceived crime.</p>
<p>That may sound like a foreign concept to secular ears. The reality, though, is that most Western blasphemy laws are rooted in a similar logic of religious offense. </p>
<p>As historians like <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/01/obituaries/01levy.html">Leonard Levy</a> and <a href="https://www.brookes.ac.uk/hpc/staff-and-students/academic-staff/?uid=p0070929&op=full">David Nash</a> have <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807845158/blasphemy/">documented</a>, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/blasphemy-in-the-christian-world-9780199255160?cc=us&lang=en&">these laws</a> – dating, mostly, from the 1200s to the early 1800s – were designed to protect Christian beliefs and practices from the sort of “hurt” and “ridicule” that animates Islamic blasphemy laws today. But as the West became increasingly secular, religious injury gradually lost much of its power to provoke. By the mid-20th century, most Western blasphemy laws had become virtually dead letters.</p>
<p>That’s certainly true of the U.S., where such laws remain <a href="http://www.bu.edu/ilj/files/2014/05/Aswad-US-and-Blaspemy.pdf">“on the books” in six states</a> but haven’t been invoked <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807845158/blasphemy/">since at least the early 1970s</a>. They’re now widely held to be <a href="http://www.bu.edu/ilj/files/2014/05/Aswad-US-and-Blaspemy.pdf">nullified by the First Amendment.</a></p>
<p>Yet looking beyond the American context, one will find that blasphemy laws are hardly obsolete throughout the West. Instead, they’re acquiring new uses for the 21st century.</p>
<h2>Religious offense in a secular world</h2>
<p>Consider the case of a Danish man who was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/world/europe/denmark-quran-burning.html">charged with blasphemy</a>, in February, for burning a Quran and for posting a video of the act online.</p>
<p>In the past, Denmark’s blasphemy law had only ever been enforced to punish anti-Christian expression. (It was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/world/europe/denmark-quran-burning.html?_r=0">last used in 1946</a>.) Today it serves to highlight an ongoing trend: In an increasingly pluralist, multicultural West, blasphemy laws find fresh purpose in policing intolerance between religious communities.</p>
<p>Instead of preventing injury to God, these laws now seek to prevent injury to the social fabric of avowedly secular states. </p>
<p>That’s true not only of the West’s centuries-old blasphemy laws but also of more recent ones. Ireland’s Defamation Act, for instance, <a href="http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2009/act/31/section/36/enacted/en/html#sec36">targets any person</a> who “utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion.”</p>
<p>With its emphasis on the “outrage” blasphemy may cause among “any religion,” this measure seems to be aimed less at protecting the sacred than at preventing intolerance among diverse religious groups.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167387/original/file-20170501-17307-tfg2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167387/original/file-20170501-17307-tfg2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167387/original/file-20170501-17307-tfg2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167387/original/file-20170501-17307-tfg2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167387/original/file-20170501-17307-tfg2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167387/original/file-20170501-17307-tfg2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167387/original/file-20170501-17307-tfg2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustrations of prophecy: particularly the evening and morning visions of Daniel, and the apocalyptical visions of John (1840).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/126377022@N07/14577102519">Internet Archive Book Images. Image from page 371.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The law itself has caused outrage of a different sort, however. Advocacy organizations, such as <a href="http://atheist.ie/">Atheist Ireland</a>, have expressed fierce opposition to the law and to the example it sets internationally. In late 2009, for instance, Pakistan <a href="http://atheist.ie/2016/01/irish-blasphemy-laws-are-five-years-old-today/">borrowed the exact language</a> of the Irish law in its own proposed statement on blasphemy to the United Nations’ Human Rights Council. </p>
<p>Thus, Atheist Ireland <a href="http://atheist.ie/campaigns/blasphemy-law/">warns</a> on its website that “Islamic States can now point to a modern pluralist Western State passing a new blasphemy law in the 21st century.”</p>
<h2>Blasphemy in modernity</h2>
<p>That warning resonates with the common Western view of blasphemy as an antiquated concept, a medieval throwback with no relevance to “modern,” “developed” societies.</p>
<p>As Columbia University professor <a href="http://english.columbia.edu/people/profile/412">Gauri Viswanathan</a> puts it, <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6250.html">blasphemy is often used</a> “to separate cultures of modernity from those of premodernity.” Starting from the assumption that blasphemy can exist only in a backward society, critics point to blasphemy as evidence of the backwardness of entire religious cultures.</p>
<p>I would argue, however, that this eurocentric view is growing increasingly difficult to sustain. If anything, blasphemy seems to be enjoying a resurgence in many corners of the supposedly secular West.</p>
<p>The real question now is not whether blasphemy counts as a crime. Instead it’s about who, or what – God or the state, religion or pluralism – is the injured party.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75026/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steve Pinkerton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A recent case of comedian Stephen Fry being accused of blasphemy is a reminder that blasphemy laws are not unique to the Muslim world.Steve Pinkerton, Lecturer in English, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.