SHAME AT SIALKOT AND SHAME ON US ALL
On December 3 this year it happened once again - this time at Sialkot. A hapless, helpless person was lynched and killed by a huge band of religious brigands who accused him of blasphemy.
The crime shocked us here in Sri Lanka as the victim was one of our citizens. It shocked the world because of its brutality and it shamed the Pakistani nation as a whole.
A few issues are as galvanising to followers of the Islamic faith as blasphemy. Even the slightest suggestion of an insult to Islam can supercharge protests incite killings, lynching and can even result in death fatwahs being issued.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that minority segments of the Pakistani population and their families have been targeted and attacked/killed after being accused of blasphemy.
Pakistan, has notorious draconian laws against blasphemy, which carry the death sentence. The laws are often used against religious minorities and those accused are sometimes lynched before they are proven guilty in a court of law. The culture of fear around blasphemy cases means judges too, are often afraid to find the accused anything other than guilty.
One of Pakistan’s most infamous blasphemy cases is that of the Christian woman Asia Bibi, who was sentenced to death in 2010. Almost a decade later when she was finally acquitted after her conviction was overturned, the lady and her family had to be literally smuggled out of the country to escape the bigots.
However, today the situation appears to have changed. Not only has the Pakistani Prime Minister promised to unleash the full force of the law against the perpetrators of the crime, he has in fact already apprehended over a hundred of those who participated in the crime. He has also taken into custody those rascals who gave leadership to the murder itself.
Normally Pakistan’s extreme religious groups take up arms to protect the perpetrators who murder in the name of religion. This time around however, no group has taken any action to prevent the implementation of the PM’S order.
Hopefully, this latest murder could prove to be death knell ‘of the rule of blasphemy law’ in Pakistan. The blasphemy law itself, was opportunistically brought in and strengthened by President Zia ul Huk to garner support from religious bigots in the aftermath of his overthrow and killing of the elected head of that country.
At this time, it is good to remind ourselves, that bigotry is not limited to any particular religion, race, community or country. We can scarcely forget during World War II, in Germany millions of Jews were exterminated under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, simply because they were Jews.
What is sad however, is that today, the Jewish state of Israel is killing and robbing the Palestinian people of their lands, lives and livelihood because the Palestinians are non-jews. The State of Israel bases its claim to the land of Palestine on a biblical verse which it claims, was God’s promise to Israelites.
Again, in the Arabian Peninsula poverty-stricken Yemenis are being used as pawns in power games played by their oil-rich neighbours.
In Asia, during the final days of World War II, the US exploded two nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in minutes while reducing the cities to matchwood. Had the Japanese been Caucasian, that country would never have been nuclear bombed - racial bigotry.
In Vietnam, when the US realised it could not defeat the Viet Cong, they used defoliants like Agent Orange - a herbicide defoliant chemical - on civilian populated areas. The US also used napalm bombs on civilian targets - Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) banned in warfare.
Nearer home, during the past 20 years since the American invasion of Afghanistan, the US literally bombed that country to the ground in reprisal for Osama bin Laden’s (a Saudi national) bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York.
Unable to militarily defeat the Afghan resistance the US withdrew leaving the country in chaos. Today (December 6) the UN has warned that Afghanistan is on the brink of ‘horrific’ starvation... But the US has imposed blanket sanctions blocking bank transfers, transfer of urgently needed food supplies etc., to that country.
No bigotry and its vile deeds are not sole preserve of a particular race, country or religion. During the crusades Christians too killed Muslims.
What bigots, whether they be racial, religious or whether they go by any other name, forget is that all religions teach love of fellow beings irrespective of colour, creed, race or religion.