Pakistanis face blasphemy claim
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani police have registered a case of blasphemy against 68 lawyers who waged a public protest after a police officer detained one of their colleagues, officials said, the latest in a tidal wave of such accusations flooding the country.
Analysts say the surge in accusations is a worrying sign that the nucleararmed nation of 180 million people is becoming less tolerant as militant ideas enter mainstream politics.
The colonial-era law does not define blasphemy, but the charge carries the death penalty. Presenting evidence can be considered a new infringement, so judges are reluctant to hear cases.
Judges who free those accused of blasphemy have been attacked, and two politicians who suggested reforming the law were shot dead. Those acquitted often have been lynched.
Monday’s charges followed a protest in which lawyers shouted slogans against senior police officer Umar Daraz for allegedly illegally detaining a lawyer in the Jhang district of central Pakistan.
“Lawyers were protesting against police, using foul language and the name of the inspector,” the district’s police officer, Zeeshan Asghar, said.
A companion of the Prophet Muhammad, founder of the Islamic religion, was called Hazrat Umar.
A member of a far-right sectarian party complained that his religious feelings were offended because the lawyers used the name Umar in their protest, and he lodged charges with police.
Blasphemy accusations have spiked in Pakistan, a 2012 study by an Islamabad research group, the Center for Research and Security Studies, showed, with 80 complaints in 2011, up from a single case in 2001.
More-recent figures are not available.
Pakistan has not yet executed anyone for blasphemy, but members of religious minorities say they often are threatened with such accusations.
Last week, a respected human-rights lawyer was killed after facing threats in court for defending a university professor whose students had accused him of blasphemy. It had taken the professor a year to find a lawyer to defend him.
Police said the accuser was a member of the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamat, a front for a banned Sunni sectarian group linked to the deaths of hundreds of minority Shi’ite Muslims and led by politician Maulana Ahmed Ludhianvi.