A pitiable retreat

PPP leader and MNA Sherry Rehman has been forced to withdraw the bill she had tabled at the National Assembly to amend the blasphemy law. She says she was not consulted on the matter, adding that even though she had not been taken into confidence, she would abide by the prime minister and her party’s position on the matter. That means further discussion of any procedural amendments to the controversial blasphemy law is now precluded, and its abuse will continue.

Her bill sought to make some humane changes in the law as it stands today. Submitted last year in the wake of what happened after the victimisation of a Christian woman under the law, the bill sought to return the legislation to its earlier formulation, allowing life imprisonment as only maximum punishment. The universally criticised aspect of Section 295-C of the Penal Code was the minimum sentence of death, which precluded bail under mitigating circumstances and tied the hands of the judge to decide on a verdict commensurate with the seriousness of the blaspheming content.

Two members of the PPP had taken a courageous stand on the victimisation of Aasia Bibi and the death sentence handed down to her by a sessions judge: Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer and MNA Sherry Rehman. The governor was killed by a policeman after the clergy joined hands across their sectarian squabbles and issued fatwas of death against him. Sherry Rehman was forced to arrange for her security because agitators in this country no longer resort to legal means of achieving their ends.

Across the world, opinion has turned negative about Pakistan, realising that in some cases even discussion of disputed laws is no longer possible. The PPP government, even if it was earlier thinking of pardoning the victim, quickly came under pressure by the desertion of its coalition partners and the opposition. It was daunted by the successful warning made by the clergy that no cleric should read or attend Governor Taseer's funeral prayers. Not only that, all politicians decided to bury their heads in sand and the lawyers’ community came forward to glamorise and defend the killer of the governor in the court of law.

Seeing how successful their campaign was, the clergy closed their ranks and launched a further attack on the government, demanding that the bill tabled by Sherry Rehman be taken back. They also demanded that the government undo the committee formed to discuss the draft of the proposed legislation. Because of the backing of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan the clergy then started their countrywide show of strength and increased the temperature of reaction through their patently false arguments for retaining the blasphemy law as it is.

Sherry Rehman’s explanation of what she was trying to do was persuasive, but no one paid any heed to it: “No Muslim would expect not to protect the Holy Prophet’s (pbuh) name, and no Pakistani would ever suggest anything other than that. The changes I had submitted were simple: that people be given a chance to prove their innocence like in all laws, and that cases be tried at the Higher Courts, that penalties be given according to the Holy Quran, and that no one who makes false charges in the name of the Holy Prophet (pbuh), who swore always to defend the innocent and the vulnerable, go unpunished.”

The clerics came on TV channels and took advantage of the illiterate and scared TV hosts to claim that the Holy Quran clearly ordered death to the blasphemer. No one has yet shown the precise ‘hundred or so verses’ of the Holy Quran containing the edict of death. In some cases, where the verses were recited, it was discovered that the said cleric had cleverly omitted certain in-between verses to connect blasphemy with munafiqeen (hypocrites) spreading schism among Muslims who are ordained to be killed. Unfortunately, what one can say in Pakistan in English one can’t say in Urdu, with the result that the Urdu press has, by and large, allowed the controversial law to stand by default.

An opportunity to inform the people about a defective and exploitative ‘human legislation’ has been lost.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 4^th, 2011.