November 09, 2012
Blasphemy laws are darkening Pakistan's skies
A Lahore girls' school has been burned to the ground and an astronomer's family arrested because of this tool of intolerance.
Salman Hameed in The Guardian:
...on 31 October the school was burned to the ground by a crowd who had heard it was accused of blasphemy. Lab equipment and computers were looted. Hundreds of library books – obviously with little use to the mob – tossed into the fire. Some even tried to pull the marble tiles off the floor.
The blasphemy accusations are not related to astronomy. Instead, they centre on a teacher at the school, Arfa Iftikhar. In a rush for the start of the Eid holiday, she accidentally missed a page while copying a homework assignment for the class. Her mistake merged a line about the prophet of Islam with the lines of a chapter on beggars. A parent of one of the students in her class noticed it, and the chatter of blasphemy spread quickly.
It did not matter that this was an unintentional mistake. In the current climate, it is comically easy to accuse someone of blasphemy in Pakistan. In fact, in this instance, the blame was also extended to the school administrators, including Asim.
The accused teacher is now in hiding and the police have arrested the 77-year-old principal of the school.
More here. More information at Salman Hameed's blog here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 08:32 AM | Permalink
Comments
"It might be easy to blame religion here."
Yes it is, Salman. And that too one particular religion. But it is apparently also easier to deny.
"But this is not a battle between freethinkers and religious zealots."
In which case it is a battle between religious zealots and religiously greater zealots?!
Posted by: Sam | Nov 9, 2012 11:24:15 AM
Sam, you have to give him some room to move man. At least he is trying.
one step at a time.
Posted by: omar | Nov 9, 2012 11:56:27 AM
Sam,
My point here is that religion is not the sole reason for this craziness here. It is one of the contributing variables. And religion may play a different role for different people in the same society - for some it is destructive, and for some it is constructive. This is the reason I wanted to clarify that Umair or the accused teacher are not fighting freethinking battle here (it may be important for some - but this is not their battle). Does that make them "religious zealots"? I think they may have more or less the religiosity within a modern world as much of the world population (especially in the Muslim world, much of Africa, and South America).
One parallel may be to look at European witch trials. Sure, religion was one of the factors. But displaced population due to wars, poverty, and other factors made some parts of the population especially vulnerable to these accusations, and to the death of thousands. I think it will be mistaken to say that witch-trails were solely because of religion.
Pakistan is currently facing a weak central government, breakdown of law and order, steep economic differences between the classes, a war on the northern border, terrorism, and sectarian strife. In these circumstances, minorities (be it ethnic or religious) are often the target. Blasphemy law - like the accusations of witchcraft - then becomes one of the tools to make this purge.
Posted by: Salman Hameed | Nov 9, 2012 11:58:41 AM
btw, we have post on this issue that gives some details:
http://www.brownpundits.com/2012/11/03/no-bail-for-blasphemer/
http://www.brownpundits.com/2012/11/01/another-school-principal-commits-blasphemy/
Posted by: omar | Nov 9, 2012 12:01:36 PM
Good luck Pakistanis. I wish you well in the transition to iModernity. It's going to be a difficult time for all.
Posted by: Mike Cope | Nov 10, 2012 4:26:23 AM
This is not a problem of religion, Islam or how to interpret Islam (or any other religion whatever).
Here we have a classic example of a country, Pakistan, where there is no Freedom of Religion/Freedom of Thought as a constitutionalism right.
France (as an opposite example)"is a country where freedom of religion and freedom of thought are guaranteed by virtue of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The Republic is based on the principle of laïcité (or "freedom of conscience")... French secularism, in French, laïcité (pronounced [la.isiˈte]) is a concept denoting the absence of religious involvement in government affairs as well as absence of government involvement in religious affairs." (Wikipedia)
The only solution and hope for Pakistan is a coup d'etat, a take-over as in Turkey by the Young Turks,that will bring the secularism and the necssary reforms as those of Kemal Atatürk . This may be done only by a powerful elite of Pakistani intellectuals, army officers and businessmen; maybe with the help of foreign capital and powers and Pakistani diaspora.
The signs and traces are already visible and 3Q, some comments and blogs are showing the change to come.
Good luck.
Posted by: mirel | Nov 10, 2012 8:36:27 AM
Bigots exist in all countries.
In Pakistan they receive support of the government and courts of law. No wonder that people are afraid to speak out.
Posted by: waqnis | Nov 10, 2012 11:11:28 AM
Hey Salman, good piece and I read a little further on Irtiqa. It's interesting how different people attribute degrees of causation on wildly differing variables such as religion, politics and economics. In CT studies there is also much debate on the role of religion in the motivation and justification of religious terrorism. You have people such as Pape and Esposito casting religion in pretty much a subsidiary role and then you have Jones, Bassam Tibi and Juergensmeyer arguing that is a much more evenly spread multi-factorial phenomena. I tend to agree with the latter argument and I do think it's important not to reduce the religious element to just an expression of the other economic and political factors, as many seem to do.
Posted by: Troy | Nov 10, 2012 9:56:02 PM
Salman, my understanding is that the "witches" in Europe were often repositories of pagan healing rituals and spiritual knowledge, which was viewed as a threat by the patriarchal church that was bent on exterminating all remaining vestiges of the preexisting pagan religion. Thus the persecution there (or in Roman Egypt - Hypatia) was essentially religiously motivated, just as it is in Pakistan today and elsewhere for the remaining minorities in the Islamic world - including Turkey which is rapidly reversing Ataturk's vision of secularism.
Posted by: Sam | Nov 11, 2012 2:21:19 AM
Sam
I also thought the 'witches' analogy was a little misguiding, not only because it was going back centuries in reference. There are definite dissimilarities in the context of the two situations as you mention, but there is also a need for some middle ground on the causation of religion as a contributing factor in the woes of modern or developing societies. This seems particularly apt in contemporary times when religion is forwarded as the precipitant factor in much of the planets misdemeanors. And maybe it is. For the Islamic world, unraveling what is exactly religious and what is political in an all-encompassing ideology is problematic.
Posted by: Troy | Nov 11, 2012 3:07:12 AM
Actually, Troy, I thought that there were plenty of similarities despite the intervening centuries. Pakistan, along with Sudan and Somalia, are the leading edge of the Islamic world's reversion to 7th century mores. The European dark ages, I believe, spanned the 10th-15th centuries; although even by the 5th century CE the Christian Taliban were ripping-out Hypatia's flesh with oyster shells. The centuries, perhaps, are not all that far apart in this context.
Posted by: Sam | Nov 11, 2012 11:46:07 PM
Does anyone else feel that the teacher's excuse sounds suspiciously weak? "Accidentally missed a page"? Likely story. Why has she fled if she is innocent? I think there is enough evidence to convict.
Posted by: Sundar | Nov 12, 2012 8:16:51 AM
Sundar,
She has fled because she has no faith in the impartiality of the Pakistani legal system and doesn't want to die. That seems to be an entirely legitimate fear.
Salman,
I understand that fighting for secularism is not the purpose of the people involved here. But it seems that one isn't allowed to remain neutral. The crazies won't let people be. What was the response of the police in this situation? You're telling me that the police won't protect a school from a mob? Was the mob angry that it was a private school, while they can't get a decent public school?
It would really be great for Pakistan if they spent less on the military and more on education, but since that seems to be out of the question, here we are.
Posted by: Hektor Bim | Nov 12, 2012 8:34:42 PM
Hektor,
Sundar is taking the piss.
Posted by: Alain Gélinas | Nov 12, 2012 11:09:02 PM
Sundar is obviously being facetious. However, it is a matter of life or death and she and her family must be living in mortal terror at the moment. Life in ordinary Pakistan, outside of the bubbles that the elite live in (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17581712), is increasingly a Kafkaesque nightmare. Even the persecuted feel obliged to condemn the supposed blasphemy of others!
Instead of making lame excuses or seeking nonexistent room to move, Pakistanis who are fortunate to live abroad under secular and rational laws would do better to speak out loudly and forcefully against the religious madness. Otherwise they are just deluding themselves and/or, worse, seeking to delude others in the free societies that they live in.
Posted by: Sam | Nov 13, 2012 12:26:35 AM
Sam, your advice is unlikely to convince several parties:
1. Highly Westernized intellectuals are obviously aware of the million hypocrisies and compromises that dot modern civilization. They are not impressed with the notion of improving the natives by what they themselves regard as misguided/failed Western methods. Being in the fortunate position of not having to actually implement any alternative, they are doubly blessed; Vague notions of "there must be something better than the evil nation state and the tyranny of Capital" can fuel the next 100 op-eds and 1000 addas. (btw, I agree...there must be something better..but it aint the heroic revolutionaries Tariq Ali is currently supporting)
2. Paknationalists can see that contrary to biased portrayals in the Zionist-Hindu media, Pakistanis are actually driving vintage cars from Karachi to Peshawar without a fear in the world. http://paknationalists.net/ Enuff said.
3. Islamists, for obvious reasons. Though if Pakistan was like Egypt or Tunisia, i.e. a reasonably agreed upon country geographically and ethnically, then the milder Islamists could conceivably be given the job of shooting the crazier ones.http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=456131 But our case is more confused.
its not going to be easy.
Posted by: omar | Nov 13, 2012 11:16:26 AM
Sam and Troy,
I think we are agreeing on more things than we disagree. But let me throw in a couple of clarifications.
a) I think religion is indeed a factor here. But it is definitely not the sole factor - and may even not the dominant one. In this particular case, we have to take into account various competing education systems that exist in Pakistan and how they correlate with classes. For example, the madrassas are usually associated with lower class and of lower quality of education. Farooqi school - a private school - caters to a middle class population. Now there are historical reasons (linked to the British and then the continued policies of Pak government) of how this kind of stratification happened - but it is ingrained in the society today. The burning up of the school, to me, it seems like a display of muscle over other competing authorities. (it would be good to understand the local politics in the neighborhood - but right now, only scant information is available).
b) Regarding the witchcraft example, indeed, it would be too simplistic to make a one-to-one comparison. But as a clarification, I was referring to the killing of 50,000-80,0000 people, mostly women, from 1480 to 1630CE. Most of these witch killings happened in Germany or other areas that were affected by the 30 years war (and not as much in Spain and Italy, where the Inquisition provided an "official" way of dealing with accusations), and done by Catholics, Protestants, and even secular authorities (in blaming satan). It will be too easy (and probably too simplistic) to say that religion was responsible for these trials. But then what follows from that? We have to figure out a way to explain the spectacular rise in witchcraft trials between 1480 and 1630 - and why it was becoming easy to accuse and kill someone accused of witchcraft during that time and how to explain the variations in the responses across Europe. Blasphemy accusations in Pakistan are easy to make and it is even easier to rile up a crowd behind that. But what factors are driving these - which were not present a few decades ago. For an answer to that, we will have to look beyond religion.
Posted by: Salman Hameed | Nov 13, 2012 3:53:57 PM
It's not looking beyond religion but around it.
When a state, and a fractious one at that, elevates religion to a position beyond all reproach, then duplicitous people will mount a spurious defence of that said religion against a completely invented and imagined attack in order to personally gain in some way. Like the witch trials, there are surrounding motivations and justifications at play, but religion still plays a central role.
Posted by: Troy | Nov 13, 2012 7:46:36 PM
"there are surrounding motivations and justifications at play, but religion still plays a central role."
But if religion has always been in an exalted position (as in Pakistan's case - as part of its very identity), then it may not give us much causal information. Or in other words, religion in this case (or even in the post Reformation era Europe) is so central that we may have to look "around" religion to seek explanations.
Posted by: Salman Hameed | Nov 13, 2012 10:06:22 PM
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