Jamia Naeemia cleric calls for release of blasphemy accused

Mufti Ghafoor says accused denies burning Quran and he must be believed.

LAHORE: An Ahl-e-Sunnat cleric has issued a fatwa calling for the release of an Ahl-e-Hadith man accused of blasphemy by burning pages of the Holy Quran.

Mufti Muhammad Hashim Ghafoor of Jamia Naeemia wrote in his decree that he had been told by Rai Sarfaraz Khan   who is a member of the same Ahl-e-Hadith mosque committee as the accused Shahid Hassan Butt   that Butt had sworn under oath that he had not committed blasphemy or disrespected the holy book in any way.

Ghafoor wrote that a Muslim’s word under oath should be believed, so Butt should be released and people should stop defaming him. He wrote also that Islamic scholars agreed that the best way to dispose of old pages of the Holy Quran was to bury them respectfully, not burn them.

Local Ahl-e-Sunnat clerics and their followers in Jallo Mor accused Butt and two others of burning pages of the Holy Quran and had an FIR registered against them under Section 295 of the Pakistan Penal Code at Batapur police station on October 3.

Butt’s relatives are trying to get him released. On Sunday, they took local MPA Malik Habib Awan to the complainant to press for a reconciliation.

But Abid Hassan Butt, the brother of the accused, told The Express Tribune that the MPA, after discussions with the complainants, had returned without any positive news. “We are trying to convince the complainant of their innocence. How can my brother, who is a truly religious man, defile the Holy Quran?”

Haji Muhammd Yasin, one of the Ahl-e-Sunnat complainants, said that the relatives of the accused had earlier been saying that burning pages of the Holy Quran was allowed in Islam, but now they were saying that they did not burn any pages. “There is no chance of reconciliation. If we let the accused go free, then we will all face the wrath of God,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 18^th, 2010.