THE
fate of 65-year-old Khalil Ahmed was sealed on the day he was accused of
blasphemy. It was his death warrant. He was killed while in police detention
hours after he was arrested.
A schoolboy, who has not been identified by name, reportedly
walked into the police station and shot Ahmed dead in full view of the
officers. What motivated the teenager to commit this cold -blooded murder?
Perhaps he was inspired by the glorification of other murders
committed for alleged blasphemy. Or perhaps he was incited by some zealot. The
young boy had been growing up watching Mumtaz Qadri, the murderer of governor
Salmaan Taseer, being garlanded. Qadri also had a mosque outside the capital
named after him, and his larger-than-life portraits adorn certain public
places. The young killer might have been told that the same glory awaited him.
He is the product of a society that condones vigilantism and
exalts murder committed in the name of religion; the guardians of the law are
too afraid to act against the ‘holy killers’. It is a country where a judge had
to flee abroad after convicting Qadri. No wonder the Islamabad High Court is
reluctant to validate the conviction.
It was the second murder involving the blasphemy issue in a span
of a few days. The murderers of rights activist Rashid Rehman have not yet been
apprehended despite his having named those who threatened him. Even if
arrested, they may never be convicted, thus encouraging other potential ‘holy
murderers’.
In Ahmed’s case, it was shocking that the murderer could walk
into a police station, and not be stopped from killing a detainee. The incident
in a central Punjab village not far from Lahore was not a breaking story and
was underplayed by most of the print media, maybe because the victim was
Ahmadi.
Ahmed along with three others was reportedly arrested on
blasphemy charges after an altercation with a local shopkeeper. Being members
of a persecuted religious minority makes Ahmadis more vulnerable to concocted
charges, which gives bigots a licence to kill. In this environment the young
murderer is not an aberration.
All this started when the state took upon itself the
responsibility of deciding who is Muslim and who is not and legalising
religious persecution. A corollary of this is that individuals too have now
taken up the right to give verdicts on the religious beliefs of others. The
mullahs have become custodians of the law as the state’s authority is fast
eroding.
In fact, the blasphemy law has become a weapon of persecution
and even those defending the accused are deemed liable. Some time ago, a
blasphemy case was filed against former information minister Sherry Rehman for
suggesting some procedural changes in the law in the National Assembly.
A glaring example of the gross misuse of the law was witnessed
last week when 68 lawyers were booked on blasphemy charges for chanting slogans
against a police officer whose name happened to be Omar. The sword of Damocles
hangs over every Pakistani citizen, much more so over religious minorities. It
is a death warrant once you are accused of blasphemy.
It is despicable the way the blasphemy law is being used in the
ongoing media war between rival channels who have filed cases of blasphemy
against each other. There is no dearth of instances where clerics are ‘rented’
to get a fatwa to declare the other channel un-Islamic.
Mullahs are having a field day dominating the television screen.
What the TV channels do not realise is that no one will come out unscathed in
this dirty war. It is the hard-won media freedom that is now under threat. The
fear now is that radical clerics will decide what should appear on TV
programmes.
This war of fatwas presents a serious threat to the lives of
some TV hosts and employees, forcing them to go into hiding or even to flee the
country. This fragmented, dysfunctional state cannot protect the lives of those
coming in the crossfire.
The role of some security and intelligence agencies in fuelling
the hate campaign for settling scores with critics is despicable. Use of
religion for proxy wars by state institutions is an extremely dangerous game
giving more space to the extremists.
Resultantly, the radical clerics are once again taking centre
stage in the ongoing political circus. One can see them leading pro-military
rallies holding larger-than-life portraits of the ISI and army chiefs and
spewing their toxic narratives on television screens.
Surely they are trying to seize this opportunity to raise the
stakes and sell their services to the highest bidders. The tension between
civilians and the military, and their proxy war through the media, has further
empowered extremist religious groups and clerics. This situation will breed
more violence in society.
This atmosphere not only produces more child suicide bombers but
also teenaged killers like the one who shot Khalil Ahmed. Religious extremism
and growing intolerance has polarised and fragmented the country making it
increasingly difficult to have rational discourse on religion and other
important issues.
Worse still is the failure of the state to deal with this highly
dangerous situation. What we are witnessing today is the unravelling of the
state. The use of religion and extremist mullahs as a proxy in the power game
is a destructive trend that is threatening the unity of the country.
The writer is an author
and journalist.
Twitter: @hidhussain
Published in Dawn, May
21st, 2014
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