Last October, Younus was giving a physiology lecture at Islamabad’s Capital Homeopathic College. It all seemed innocent enough until the professor starting talking about the prophet Muhammad and certain practices prevalent in pre-Islam seventh-century Arabia. Among other things, the professor stated that Muhammad was a non-Muslim till the age of 40, that he was not circumcised until then and that his parents were non-Muslims. His students and local mullahs accused him of making sacrilegious remarks, and the professor was arrested by Islamabad police under a controversial blasphemy law. Enacted in 1981, it states that whoever “directly or indirectly defiles the sacred name of the prophet is punishable by death.” Ostensibly meant to prevent any disrespect to Islam, the law has become a weapon of persecution for religious extremists.
Younus, a respected professor, denied the blasphemy charge at his trial, saying his remarks were twisted. “My students asked me about the shaving of pubic and armpit hair, and I, in describing the glory of Allah’s revelations, said that before the arrival of Islam, the Arabs did not have these practices–and truly they did not,” he said in a court statement. But the mullahs maintain that the professor’s remarks defile the prophet’s image and thus the law applies to him.
The trial, held within the prison for security reasons, was tense and emotional. On the day Younus was convicted, Islamic zealots outside the prison said the judge faced serious consequences if he failed to hand down the death penalty. “The judge was visibly harassed,” says Muhammed Hussain Chotiya, the lawyer for the doctor. According to Chotiya, the judge admitted to him that the charges were flawed and that he was going to acquit the professor. “We were shocked when he pronounced the death sentence. The order did not even have his signature,” claims Chotiya.
Human-rights groups maintain that Younus was framed because of his liberal views. Younus has practiced medicine in Pakistan and Ireland and has been an active member of the South Asia Peace Movement and the International Humanist and Ethical Union. “The clerics generated an atmosphere where it was not possible for the accused to get a fair trial,” says I. A. Rehman, director of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). The pressure on Pakistani judges to uphold the law has increased recently. In 1998, an Islamic extremist shot dead a Lahore high-court judge, Arif Iqbal Hussain Bhatti, after he suspended a blasphemy death sentence handed down to two Christians by a lower court.
The doctor is unmarried and does not have children. But his father and brother, who live in the central Punjab town of Chistian, are also afraid. “I do not want to say anything,” said Mohammed Afzal, the professor’s brother, when NEWSWEEK contacted him by phone. “Initially they were reluctant even to accept legal help or allow us to publicize the case for fear that it would further antagonize the mullahs,” says Khadim Hussain, a human-rights activist.
Hundreds of people, mostly Christians and non-Muslims, are facing trial under the draconian law. According to the HRCP, at least four people (including three Muslims) have been condemned to death by lower courts. Their fate will be decided by the superior courts that are hearing their appeals. Last month a Lahore high court upheld a blasphemy death penalty for a Christian, Ayub Masih–the first time a blasphemy conviction has been upheld by a high court. Activists say the Masih case shows how the law has become, in the hands of unscrupulous men, a weapon of oppression–or just a way to settle scores. Masih was reportedly accused of blasphemy following a land dispute with a Muslim landlord. His conviction by a lower court in May 1998, in the Punjab city of Faisalabad, so depressed Roman Catholic bishop John Joseph that he shot and killed himself in front of the courthouse. The bishop’s last words were, “Ayub, I am offering my life for you.”
Many times, people accused of blasphemy have been killed by fanatical mobs after they were acquitted by the courts. Two people charged with blasphemy were murdered even before the court issued a verdict. One of the victims, Naimat Ahmer, was stabbed to death in Faisalabad. The other, Manzoor Masih, was shot dead outside the Lahore high court. “An aroused mob will not wait to confirm whether a person charged is guilty or not, or even whether an offense in fact has been committed or not,” says Rehman of the HRCP.
Conservative Islamists have blocked any move to amend the blasphemy law. They launched a nationwide agitation last year when Pakistan’s military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, tried to stop its misuse by making some procedural changes. But Musharraf dropped the idea after he was pressured by hard-line generals. In Pakistan these days, free speech is a dangerous thing.
