A Dissenting Voice on Pakistan's Blasphemy Law

by Yoginder Sikand

Countercurrents.org

January 21, 2011

In the wake of the dastardly killing of Salman Taseer, governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province, for having dared to question Pakistan’s draconian anti-blasphemy law, scores of Pakistani ‘Islamic’ outfits celebrated the crime by showering encomiums on the man’s murderer, insisting that his action was perfectly in consonance with (their understanding of) Islam. They feted him as an intrepid Islamic hero, a ghazi or warrior of the faith. Across the border, not a single Indian Muslim religious organization condemned the attack. This might well suggest that they shared the enthusiasm of their Pakistani counterparts, although, for obvious reasons, they were unable to openly express their delight at the deadly event. Probably the only Islamic scholar of note on either side of the border to have condemned the brutal murder in no uncertain terms, and to have insisted that it had no sanction whatsoever in Islam, was the New Delhi-based Maulana Wahiduddin Khan. He immediately responded to the murder in an article published in the Times of India, insisting that the punishment of death for blasphemy, as prescribed in Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy law, had no sanction in Islam at all.

Read the rest here.

Comment: It is absolutely true that Blasphemy has "no sanction" in Islam.  In fact, it is not even present in the Qur'an as a concept.

Blasphemy laws/edicts inclusive of so-called "fatwas" that are issued against anyone who 'blasphemes' against Islam is not only unfounded but essentially a fabricated political manipulation.

Islam has five straightforward pillars that define it.  You either accept all five or you don't.  If you accept all five and commit to Islam you are a Muslim.  If you don't, you are not a Muslim.

In this simplicity there is also no conceptualization of fundamentalist Islam for the same reasons: There are five pillars to Islam.  If you accept all five and commit to Islam you are a Muslim.  If you don't, you are not a Muslim.

You cannot be anymore fundamental than accepting the five pillars, therefore, the concept of fundamentalism is absolutely absent in Islam.

The notion of fundamentalists or the more popular (now) Islamists are imposed from the outside without any relevance inside the religion.  Neither exist in Islam.  

For these reasons Islam does not rely on the concept of blasphemy or fundamentalism or Islamism to 'police' Muslims (and non-Muslims).

The five pillars stand simply and are interrelated as the core of being a Muslim.  Nothing more.

This context is premised on the Qur'anic injunction that there is no compulsion in religion.

You either are a Muslim or you are not.  There is no need to police this duality and hence the need for blasphemy laws is not Islamic, it is rather quite clearly un-Islamic. 

See also Islamic scholar Javed Ahmad Ghamidi argument against blasphemy laws here.

Desert demons brought Junaid S. Ahmad's article to my attention and it is worth a read to get a fuller picture of the politics beneath the blasphemy laws from inside of Pakistan.  Read it here.

Onward!