Blasphemy Islam Offended Pakistan

PAKISTAN’S BLASPHEMY LAWS LEGITIMIZES INTOLERANCE…….

Street vigilantism is a mainstay of Muslim/Islamic society, it’s how they keep the people in check.

Finland should take heed as well, they’re no different from the Pakistani government where ”hate speech” laws (criticism of Islam) is concerned. The political victimization of Jussi Halla-aho (pictured below) being one prime example.

jussiBad-mouthing

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws legitimise intolerance
Nov 29th 2014 | ISLAMABAD | From the print edition

THE killing and incarceration of people on flimsy accusations of insulting Islam has long shamed Pakistan. Hundreds, often members of religious minorities, have been ensnared by blasphemy laws that leave victims with little chance of defending themselves against malicious claims. Cowed judges are unwilling to examine evidence for fear of profanities being repeated in their courtrooms. Outside the courts, mobs can be quickly incited to acts of murder by fire-breathing mullahs.

Accusations of blasphemy soar: just one in 2011; over 100 in 2014. More than half of the 62 people murdered in the wake of blasphemy allegations since 1990 were killed in the past five years, according to figures collated by a Pakistani human-rights group that fears even to be identified. “Blasphemy” can now include spelling errors by children or throwing away a visiting-card bearing the name “Muhammad”.

On November 25th a judge in Gilgit-Baltistan sentenced the owner of Geo, Pakistan’s biggest private television channel, to 26 years in jail for broadcasting a popular Sufi song about the prophet during a light-entertainment show. (The court does not have nationwide jurisdiction, so the mogul is unlikely to ever be thrown behind bars.) The law encourages depraved vigilante attacks. In the latest, a pregnant Christian woman was beaten to death by an enraged mob.

Liberal Pakistanis blame the country’s blasphemy craze on Zia ul-Haq, an Islamist dictator who died in a plane crash in 1988. He hardened British-era blasphemy laws. Derogatory remarks about the prophet Muhammad became a capital offence. But it was his “secular” predecessor, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who amended the constitution to declare members of the Ahmedi minority non-Muslims even though they consider themselves such. Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, once served as the defence lawyer for a carpenter who had murdered the publisher of a book said to be blasphemous.

More here.

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