LAHORE: CM Maryam on Thursday urged Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz to take action against alleged blasphemers instead of using accusations of “score settling” but said such accusations are “score-settling”. .
Gang lynchings are common in Pakistan, and even an unsubstantiated accusation of blasphemy can lead to violence. Last month, Pakistan’s lower house of parliament passed a resolution condemning recent violence across the country, including a crackdown on Swat men accused of desecrating the Quran.
Addressing a conference organized by the Punjab government for Ittehad Bainul Muslimeen in Lahore to promote religious harmony, brotherhood and tolerance, Maryam spoke about the mishandling of proselytizing charges.
“These accusations are often used to settle scores,” said Maryam. “When groups get together and take the law into their own hands without specifying who did what, no one is safe.”
In today’s speech, Maryam said that cases of desecration of the Qur’an have increased significantly and said that it should be told the reason.
The Prime Minister then said that it is important for the police to quickly establish the truth of such allegations and bring anyone to justice if found guilty.
“No matter what happens, we should not allow anyone to take the law into their hands, open courts in their streets and districts, and issue judgments and fatwas,” said Maryam.
The Prime Minister said there is a need for the authorities to come together to figure out how to deal with defamation complaints.
After the accusation, he said, without specifying the facts, “a report was made and in a short time before the police arrived, people gathered in the streets, setting fire, vandalism and violence started from there.”
Emphasizing the need for police action in this regard, he said a Christian family was saved from riots in Sardoga in May, preventing “deaths like those in the Jaranwala riots”.
A Christian man wounded by the mob died a few days later.
CM Maryam said the police should take action and make crime a religious issue.
Once someone is proven guilty, he said, that person is “no longer a Muslim, Sikh, Hindu or Christian, but a criminal and must be punished for his actions.”
He then cited the case of a religious leader who was proven to have raped a minor, but when he was arrested by the police, it became a religious issue and many “fatwas” were issued against him on social media.
Maryam said, “The biggest criminals are those who cause defamation and desecrations”.
The Prime Minister also said that more than 50,000 social media accounts and pages have been blocked citing certain people’s comments against girl child education. He said, whoever rejects the teachings of Islam is a crime.
In his speech, the PML-N leader recalled how his party leaders were targeted and accused of “fixing the political results of 2017-2018”.
He lamented that it was a “difficult thing” to face “accusations by some people and political parties” when his father Nawaz Sharif was disqualified as prime minister.
Maryam spoke about the 2018 assassination attempt on Education Minister Ahsan Iqbal and was shot dead by Tehreek-i-Labbaik, a religious-political party in Pakistan.
“He (Iqbal) belongs to a very religious family. […] He was also shot, but God saved his life.”
With extremist religious views, violence against non-Muslims in Pakistan has increased since former military dictator General Ziaul Haq imposed the death penalty for proselytizing.
Between 1927 and 1986, only 14 cases of divination were reported in what is now Pakistan. But after the change in the law, the number increased rapidly. Between 1987 and 2022, at least 2,120 people are reported to have been accused of whistleblowing.
