Almost an entire Christian neighborhood was set on fire after alleged blasphemy committed by a Christian man against Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). Hundreds of people in the eastern city of Lahore last week attacked the neighborhood to punish the blasphemer. According to reports, a large crowd from a nearby mosque went to the Christian man’s house Friday night and he was previously detained by police aimed to pacify angry mob. Fortunately, no Christians were hurt as they had fled the area before the mob reach them, fearing persecution and castigation.
But their homes were ransacked and set on fire. Several policemen who tried to stop the crowd from storming got injured. Blasphemy is a serious crime in Pakistan that can carry the death penalty but frequent outraged residents try to take the lead and execute the culprit because, perhaps, they want that Allah Almighty would reward them on the Resurrection Day or do not believe entirely corrupt security and judicial system.
On account of such allegation, outraged mob will hurry to execute the law and do not let the case to pass its legal procedure. And definitely then hardly look for a single culprit, but they entire community would be punished for the sin of one, as visible in the above case. The entire Christians left their community, conceiving that the angry mob wouldn’t look merely for the blamed person but they will be deemed one and guilty for committing the blasphemy. And obviously their sense was right as outraged resident wounded several police officers of stopping them from looting and wrecking the community.
They burned down around fifty houses and looted their furniture. It was likely, if the members of the community had not evacuated their houses, we would have witnessed another sectarian tragedy.
Firstly, what is the sphere of blasphemy? And who can really identify whether a particular act or word is blasphemous or not. In the above case it is not clear; what the blamed individual did rapidly spread and angered thousands of Muslims in the area. Living for years in the country, I really doubt that any person can ever dare to commit blasphemy unless he/she becomes tired of living. Blasphemous action or word is indeed a ticket to next world. Considering Christians who are the most marginalized and deprived community, legally discriminated, should ever take such risk to fuel the anger which cause trouble for the entire community.
Secondly, it is not clear what he did or said. Was his word or action ever blasphemous? If yes, who identified so? I really doubt that the mob who wrecked the neighborhood had ever known anything about what he did or said. The mere allegation was enough to inflame them all and they stormed the community in an unacceptable and barbaric way.
I think Pakistan is succumbing finally to its very existential philosophy. It was founded on the line of religion truism. The entire philosophy of partition was based on the notion that Muslims need a separate country in order to avoid a sectarian violence in the subcontinent.
Did this question ever scratch the mind whether it is possible to erase the country from the entire non-Muslim communities? If yes, is it possible to develop a unique interpretation from Shariah that uniformly covers the entire Islamic sects? Not only Islamic history but the entire religious histories show that even during or right after the prophets different interpretations started looming which ultimately led to variety of sects and schools of thoughts. Sometimes, violence broke out within different sects of a particular religion was far severe and fierce than that of war among followers of different religions.
Presently, Pakistan is suffering from a religious upheaval. Thought Islam is the state religion and above 98 percent of the entire population are Muslims, meanwhile the country is rated top in terms of both frequency and ferocity of religious violence. The above mentioned incident is definitely part of a broader problem that has grasped the entire nation and that is nothing except “religious zero tolerance”. There are several factors which have pulled the country up to this point.
Islamic revivalism and subsequently Jihad in Afghanistan, all issues helped the spoil of religious tolerance. The above issues pulled politicians who indeed have not been much committed to religion but due to ruling environment pretend to be religious. The most obvious example can be the statement of athlete-turned politician, Imran Khan who openly claimed that insurgents’ war in Afghanistan was aligned with Shariah.
After his statement, religious scholars questioned his knowledge of Islam and branded his political view as baseless. Tens of social network users also posted his pictures, and criticizing his notion. Perhaps, some of those pictures are right and he is not a serious practitioner of religious rituals. But he understands the ruling environment where religious loudspeaker shouts louder than anytime in its history.
This process has two negative effects on the society. On one hand, systems have developed double-faced---leaders covering their faces in religious veil while they are not committed. On the other hand, radical and conservative interpretation of Shariah boomed while no one dared to stop the process which has ultimately led to zero religious tolerance. The reason is current sectarian violence that leaves no sect out of its flames.