The Abuse of Blasphemy Laws in Pakistan

A Sri Lankan working in Pakistan, Priyantha Kumara, was lynched by a mob of hundreds of people on Dec. 3, 2021, over allegations of blasphemy, or sacrilegious act. After being assaulted, he was dragged into the streets and set on fire, and the lynching was recorded and shared widely on social media.

Such tragic killings in Pakistan over blasphemy accusations are the new normal. Pakistan has the world’s second-strictest blasphemy laws after Iran, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Since 1990, 70 people have been murdered by mobs and vigilantes over allegations of insulting Islam. Several people who defended the accused were killed, too.

Of 71 countries that criminalize blasphemy, 32 are majority Muslim. Punishment and enforcement of these laws vary.

Blasphemy is punishable by death in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania and Saudi Arabia. Among non-Muslim-majority cases, the harshest blasphemy laws are in Italy, where the maximum penalty is three years in prison.

Half of the world’s 49 Muslim-majority countries have additional laws banning apostasy, meaning people may be punished for leaving Islam. All countries with apostasy laws are Muslim-majority except India. Apostasy is often charged along with blasphemy. This class of religious laws is quite popular in some Muslim countries. According to a 2013 Pew survey, about 75% of respondents in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia favor making sharia, or Islamic law, the official law of the land.

Among those who support sharia, around 25% in Southeast Asia, 50% in the Middle East and North Africa, and 75% in South Asia say they support “executing those who leave Islam” – that is, they support laws punishing apostasy with death.

The conservative ulema base their case for blasphemy and apostasy laws on a few reported sayings of the Prophet, known as hadith, primarily: “Whoever changes his religion, kill him.”

In Pakistan, the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq, who ruled the country from 1978 to 1988, is responsible for its harsh blasphemy laws. An ally of the ulema, Zia updated blasphemy laws – written by British colonizers to avoid interreligious conflict – to defend specifically Sunni Islam and increased the maximum punishment to death.

But many Islamic scholars and Muslim intellectuals reject this view as radical. They argue that Prophet Muhammad never executed anyone for apostasy, nor encouraged his followers to do so. Nor is criminalizing sacrilege based on Islam’s main sacred text, the Quran. It contains over 100 verses encouraging peace, freedom of conscience and religious tolerance.

In chapter 2, verse 256, the Quran states, “There is no coercion in religion.” Chapter 4, verse 140 urges Muslims to simply leave blasphemous conversations: “When you hear the verses of God being rejected and mocked, do not sit with them.

By using their political connections and historical authority to interpret Islam, however, the conservative ulema have marginalized more moderate voices.

Across the globe, Muslim minorities – including the Palestinians, Chechens of Russia, Kashmiris of India, Rohingya of Myanmar and Uighurs of China – have experienced severe persecution. No other religion is so widely targeted in so many different countries.  Alongside persecution are some Western policies that discriminate against Muslims, such as laws prohibiting headscarves in schools. Such Islamophobic laws and policies can create the impression that Muslims are under siege and provide an excuse that punishing sacrilege is a defense of the faith.

However, criminalizing blasphemy and apostasy is more political than it is religious. The Quran does not require punishing sacrilege: authoritarian politics do.