A christian couple was burned to death in a Kasur town near Lahore on November 4
because a 50-strong mob of pious Muslims thought they had blasphemed under
Article 295C of the penal code. The country was jolted by the savagery of the
act, but religious leaders were silent while “liberal fascists” crowded Facebook
with pessimism about the survival of a state gone bonkers. The big anti-Indian
clerics, like Hafiz Saeed, were silent or didn’t have time to spare from their
fulminations against Prime Minister “Moodhie” of India for his alleged role in
Gujarat 2002. Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif sobbed as he tried to console
the Christian family with Rs 5 million and farmland for the three children of
the dead couple. As he bent over the grief-stricken Christians, a policeman in
Gujrat, north of Lahore, hacked to death a Shia Muslim “because he uttered
blasphemous” words. Article 295C, passed in 1986, is about insulting
the Holy Prophet (PBUH), and it hands down death as the minimum
punishment.

For other offences, like the burning of the Holy Quran, you
go in for life. Article 295C is anathema to even medieval jurisprudence, but the
Pakistani parliament passed it “because if we didn’t legislate, pious people
would kill without recourse to law”, which they do anyway. The blasphemy law
says: “whoever insults the sacred name of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) by words
either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by imputation,
innuendo or insinuation, directly or indirectly” will be punished by hanging.
This is one crime that can be committed “without intent”.