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Pakistan: 68 lawyers accused of blasphemy for protesting against namesake of caliph Umar

May 13, 2014 8:52 am By Robert Spencer

blasphemy_0This story is an excellent illustration of how absurd Pakistan’s blasphemy law really is: the lawyers aren’t accused of blasphemy for any actual blasphemy, but because they were protesting against a man named Umar, and someone passing by thought they were denouncing the caliph Umar, one of Muhammad’s companions. It would be funny, were it not lethal.

“Pakistani lawyers accused of blasphemy after protesting against police,” The Guardian, May 13, 2014 (thanks to Twostellas):

Pakistani police have registered a case of blasphemy against 68 lawyers who took part in a protest after a police officer detained one of their colleagues, officials say, the latest in a wave of such accusations flooding the country.

Analysts say the surge in accusations is a worrying sign that the nuclear-armed nation of 180 million people is becoming less tolerant as militant ideas enter mainstream politics.

The colonial-era law does not define blasphemy, but the charge carries the death penalty. Presenting evidence can be considered a new infringement, so judges are reluctant to hear cases.

Judges who free those accused of blasphemy have been attacked and two politicians who suggested reforming the law were shot dead. Those acquitted have often been lynched.

Monday’s charges followed a protest in which lawyers shouted slogans against the senior police officer Umar Daraz for allegedly illegally detaining a lawyer in the Jhang district of central Pakistan.

“Lawyers were protesting against police, using foul language and the name of the inspector,” the district’s police officer, Zeeshan Asghar, told Reuters.

One of the companions of the prophet Muhammad, founder of the Islamic religion, was called Hazrat Umar.

A member of a far-right sectarian party complained that his religious feelings had been offended because the lawyers used the name “Umar” in their protest, and lodged charges with police.

You see here again that for the mainstream media, “far-right” is simply a term they use for anyone whom they dislike. So we have the absurd situation that people are “far-right” in the West for opposing Sharia blasphemy laws, and “far-right” in Pakistan for supporting them.

Mushtaq Chaudhry, a local lawyer, said his colleagues were not shouting slogans against the caliph Umar, but his police namesake.

“Our Bar Association has also passed a resolution that slogans were not raised against any sacred personality of Islam,” Chaudhry said.

Blasphemy accusations have spiked in Pakistan recently, according to a 2012 study by the Islamabad-based thinktank the Center for Research and Security Studies, with 80 complaints in 2011, up from a single case in 2001. More recent figures are not available.

Analysts say blasphemy allegations are increasingly used to settle feuds or grab property. There is no penalty for false accusations.

Pakistan has not yet executed anyone for blasphemy, but members of religious minorities say they are often threatened with such accusations.

Last week a respected human rights lawyer, Rashid Rehman, was killed after facing threats in court for defending a university professor whose students had accused him of blasphemy. It had taken the jailed professor a year to find a lawyer ready to defend him.

Police said the man who lodged Monday’s case was a member of the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamat, a front for a banned Sunni sectarian group linked to the deaths of hundreds of minority Shia Muslims and led by the politician Maulana Ahmed Ludhianvi….

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Comments

  1. Guy Macher says

    May 13, 2014 at 9:02 am

    Mohameddans being absurd!? Didn’t see that coming!

    • mortimer says

      May 13, 2014 at 9:41 am

      The premise of Pakistan was absurd, but it is a salutary example of what happens to a country when it imposes discriminatory Sharia law: HUMAN RIGHTS GO OUT THE WINDOW.

      You cannot get a fair trial in Pakistan, because anyone can merely say ‘he/she blasphemed’ and then no lawyer will defend you and no jury will listen to the defence.

      Pakistan reveals Sharia law’s dysfunctionality.

  2. john spielman says

    May 13, 2014 at 9:36 am

    Muhammed the false prophet and founder of islam was a demon possessed mass murderer thief, liar, misogynist and PEDOPHILE so islam is a blasphemy against all that is HOLY, GOOD LOVELY, JUST, HONOURABLE, AND OF GOD!

  3. Charli Main says

    May 13, 2014 at 9:41 am

    The end product of a thousand years of brain washing in Mosques and Madrassas—-a blasphemer lurking behind every stone and bush.

  4. ecosse1314 says

    May 13, 2014 at 11:33 am

    The daily record a scottish newspaper published a story about two pakistani restaurant owners in Glasgow being picked for the pakistani team for the commonwealth games.
    In the comment section i suggested that pakistan should be excluded from the games due to their blasphemy laws. F or my pains all i got was a lot of thumb downs but not a single person was prepared to defend Pakistan

    • dumbledoresarmy says

      May 13, 2014 at 10:45 pm

      You wrote – “The daily record a scottish newspaper published a story about two pakistani restaurant owners in Glasgow being picked for the pakistani team for the commonwealth games.
 In the comment section i suggested that pakistan should be excluded from the games due to their blasphemy laws.”

      YES!

      I think that is a BRILLIANT idea. How do we start a campaign calling for just that ? (It might be a bit late to achieve it, for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, but I think the Islamo-informed all over the Commonwealth could get cracking on an exclusion campaign for the *next* gig ). Asia Bibi and Rimsha Masih can be the “poster children”.

      And while we’re at it, aren’t there some *other* Mohammedan-majority Mohammedan-dominated countries still currently considered as part of the Commonwealth, who participate in the Games, who are just as human-rights-abusing as Pakistan, and should *also* be excluded?

      Frankly, what we and all other non-Muslims in the Commonwealth should start demanding, is that the Muslim-dominated “members” of the Commonwealth should…cease to *be* members. Give ’em the boot. No-one will miss ’em. The rest of us, in our various countries, all over the world, will get on just fine without them.

      Further thought: it has often occurred to me, of late, that it would be good if a Cricket Boycott were imposed upon both Pakistan and Bangladesh. I think it is high time that both of these horrible Mohammedan abusers of the human rights of their non-Muslim minorities were shut out of the international cricket circuit. *No* test matches for them, NO Cricket World Cup. Shut them out.

      • dumbledoresarmy says

        May 13, 2014 at 10:55 pm

        Pursuant to my posting above.

        I observe, thanks to the comment by “ecosse”, that the 2014 Commonwealth Games are being held in Scotland.

        Ecosse has related how he suggested, in a Scottish paper, that Pakistan be excluded from those games because of its hideous Blasphemy Law.

        Now, I think it would be well worth getting up a campaign demanding just that.

        But if not: there will be Pakistan, and a number of other horrible Muslim countries, participating in the Commonwealth Games.

        Which would be an excellent opportunity for the Islamoaware in Scotland, and in the rest of the UK, to run a protest campaign drawing attention to the scale and ubiquity and sheer awfulness of the human rights abuses perpetrated against non-Muslims within those Muslim countries, most notably, Pakistan.

        T-shirts with the face of Asia Bibi on them and a suitable slogan explaining why Pakistan is going to kill her could be printed up, and sold, and worn all over Scotland and all over the UK. Posters could be made and stuck up…everywhere.

        Perhaps the “British Pakistani Christian Association” could be contacted, and encouraged to join in, front and centre.

        • apostate says

          May 14, 2014 at 4:44 am

          Yes,yes,yes again DDA!

    • ECAW says

      May 14, 2014 at 5:47 am

      This is a ridiculous proposal.

      How many other countries would have to be banned for something somebody, or everybody, disapproves of? How many countries would be left? Anyway, simply banning what you don’t like is a favoured tactic of Muslims, not us.

      • apostate says

        May 14, 2014 at 1:07 pm

        Point ECAW but as DDA has said before it’s about education,education,education.

      • gravenimage says

        May 14, 2014 at 3:33 pm

        ECAW wrote, presumably in reply to ecosse and DDA:

        This is a ridiculous proposal.

        How many other countries would have to be banned for something somebody, or everybody, disapproves of? How many countries would be left? Anyway, simply banning what you don’t like is a favoured tactic of Muslims, not us.
        ………………………………..

        The idea that civilized nations must countenance *any* amount of barbarism in their ‘partners’ or else be regarded as somehow unfair is absurd.

        I believe that the very first step in opposing evil is *naming it* and voicing your disapproval.

        If you don’t believe this, why are you at Jihad Watch? Shouldn’t we be silent about these horrors out of—what?—respect?

        And note the moral equivalence—the idea that if tyrannical sh*tholes like Pakistan and Bangladesh were tasked with cleaning up their human rights records in order to qualify for the Commonwealth Games, that places like Scotland and Australia must, somehow, be just as bad?

        Also note the idea that if Pakistan *were* banned from the Commonwealth Games, that this would be morally equivalent to what Pakistan *itself* does—and consider that this involves imprisoning women for resisting forced marriage, sentencing Christians to death for refusing to convert to Islam, and harboring Osama bin Laden among other horrors. *Ugh*.

        • apostate says

          May 15, 2014 at 3:59 am

          well said gravenimage, you got it right ,I got it wrong.thank you.

        • ECAW says

          May 15, 2014 at 5:49 am

          Gravenimage – I do name the evil and voice my disapproval, here:

          http://ecawblog.wordpress.com/

          There is no moral equivalence in my position. It is something I loathe. You have clearly slipped over into the “let’s ban it” bigotry of the opposition.

  5. Alarmed Pig Farmer says

    May 13, 2014 at 11:55 am

    Boy, things are getting sensitive over in Dar al-Islam. To get along, a guy has to do better than walk on eggshells, but tiptoe on them. Here at home, bullying will be a big campaign issue (along with the War on Women); over there they prosecute (the War on Women is a settled matter there).

  6. Notta_allah_followa says

    May 13, 2014 at 12:38 pm

    All these people accusing each other of blasphemy reminds me of the chaos of the French Revolution where people were beheaded for suspected disloyalty to the cause. One revolutionary simply had to make an allegation that a rival had been disloyal to the stated cause and he would promptly be separated from his head. Eventually, the revolution fell into chaos as people accused each other more and more and the whole thing fell apart under its own silliness. I can only hope that history repeats itself with the world’s dumbest religion: Islam. Only a mental midget like Mo-ham-head (bacon be upon him) could conceive of a socio-political system that is so dysfunctional that people are killing each other in their filthy countries in an effort to appease its rules. Why do they need lawyers anyway? Seems like “In’shallah” would be the one and only defense one would need. If a judge then found the accused guilty, the judge himself would be guilty of blasphemy. Case closed.

    • mariam rove says

      May 13, 2014 at 1:04 pm

      . Why do they need lawyers anyway?
      You beat me to it!!! Being a lawyer and having a lawyer in muslim countries is a joke to say the least. Once they lodge these kind of charges against you, you are f…. lawyer or no lawyer. m

      • Larry S says

        May 14, 2014 at 8:32 pm

        Well, Miriam,

        As the great 20th Shiite leader, Ayatollah Khomeini put it, defense attorneys were a “Western absurdity” and that “defense attorneys merely slow down trials.” Funny thing, though, Moslem immigrants to the USA seem to make extensive use of defense attorneys.

    • kikorikid says

      May 14, 2014 at 5:08 pm

      I just stopped at Subway for a BLT.
      I told the manager if Subway ever went
      “Halal” I would never eat there again.EVER.
      The phenomena Of “Blaspheme” under
      Shariah Law and the penalty for it make
      it the primary tool to advance and impose
      Shariah Law. It shares the Totalitarian
      essence as found in the Progressive agenda.
      The sodomite-lesbian group are acting with
      greater boldness when acting out their fascist demands
      against any they call “Homophobic”. Homos and
      Islamist have assumed the mantles of victim, police, judge, and
      executioner. Like that line out of “We were Soldiers once”
      “Gentlemen, prepare to defend yourselves!”

  7. jewdog says

    May 13, 2014 at 12:59 pm

    If I change my name to Umar, then anyone who dares criticize me will be jailed for blasphemy. That sounds pretty slick, but the only catch is I would have to move to Pakistan. It’s never that easy.

    • mariam rove says

      May 13, 2014 at 1:10 pm

      but the only catch is I would have to move to Pakistan……
      Pakistan is not a country. It is a s…hole, a cess pool, and a raw sewage called a country. Yes it wont work .m

    • Angemon says

      May 13, 2014 at 3:07 pm

      Well, you *could* move to the UK and wait a couple of years.

      • mariam rove says

        May 13, 2014 at 3:35 pm

        I fear that my friend. M

  8. Walter Sieruk says

    May 13, 2014 at 2:10 pm

    First, the only reasons that there are “blasphemy laws ” in Muslims countries if that because the foundations and doctrines of Islam are so weak the this religion can’t hold up to or stand up to criticism. Second, As for the founder and prophet of Islam, Muhammad, it’s not so much the question “Was Muhammad a prophet?” It’s better stated “Was Muhammad a prophet sent by God or was Muhammad a false prophet sent by Satan to lead many people astray?” After all Jesus did warn “Beware of false prophet which comes to you in sheep’s clothing but are inwardly ravening wolves.” Matthew 7:15. The Bible further warns that “many false prophets are gone forth into the world.” First John 4:1. To give the acid test if a prophet, teacher, or religion is teaching truth of falsehoods is if the prophet, teacher or religion has teaching and doctrines that are in according to God’s Word, the Bible. That if a person or religion has teachings and doctrines that are in contradiction to God’s Word then that prophet, teacher or religion is false. As Isaiah 8:20; explains “To the law of the testimony: If they speak not according to the word , it is because there is no light in them.” [KJV] Islam denies that Jesus is the Son of God. This is in contrast to the Bible which teaches that Jesus is indeed the Son of God, John 3:16, 17, and 36. First John 2:22, 23. Likewise. Islam denies that Jesus is God the Son. In contrast to Islam the Bible teaches that Jesus is God the Son. As seen in Hebrews 1:6-8 with emphasis on verse 8. Furthermore, Islam denies that Jesus is God. This is in strong contradiction to the Bible which teaches that Jesus is God. As shown, for example, in John 1:1-3. Romans 9:5. Colossians 1:15-17. First John 5:20. Second Peter 1; 1. Titus 2:13. Moreover, by comparing the Old Testament with the New Testament will further show that Jesus is God, As in by comparing Isaiah 45:22,23. With Philippians 2:5-11. Will show Jesus is God. Also by comparing Psalm 89:8,9. With Matthew 8:23-27 will further confirm Jesus to be God. Even by comparing the New Testament book together will confirm Jesus to be God. As in John 5:22 with Romans 14:12 will show Jesus to be God. The list can go on but this should be enough. The imams and mullahs will try to “explain” this all away by claiming that Christians had corrupted the Bible through time. This claim greatly underestimates the power of God to preserve His Word in time and keep it intact and away from the corruption of men. In conclusion, Muhammad was a false prophet and Islam is a false religion, Proverbs 14:12. John 14:6.

  9. gravenimage says

    May 13, 2014 at 2:52 pm

    Pakistan: 68 lawyers accused of blasphemy for protesting against namesake of caliph Umar
    ………………………………..

    The insanity of islam in action! How would this work if every other Mohammedan were named “Muhammed”? Oh, wait…

    I guess this is one reason why no Muslims are seriously criticizing Boko Haram—after all, the leader is named after the first Caliph and “companion” of the “Prophet”—the pious Muslim who sold his child little Aisha to Muhammed to sate his horrific pedophilia. Can’t say anything bad about that…

    Really, Pakistan is just another Islamic sh*thole trying to masquerade as an actual nation. As noted, this *would* be funny if it were not so lethal.

    These lawyers likely have enough wherewithal to dodge the charges—but what if those accused were poor—or Infidels, or protesting for free speech rights or something similar? In that case, they would likely be well and truly f*cked.

    God, I hate Islam.

    • mariam rove says

      May 13, 2014 at 2:55 pm

      God, I hate Islam….
      No kidding. M

  10. baconlover says

    May 13, 2014 at 7:40 pm

    My fear my friends, is that the day is quickly approaching when a country like Pakistan, armed with nukes, will undoubtedly accuse a neighboring country of “Blasphemy” of some sort, or some other bullsh*t reason then the missiles will fly.

    There will be no deep thinking of consequence, or the dangers/wisdom of such an act, because it is the will of allah, it won’t matter one bit what the outcome could cause.

    Maybe it will start WWIII? Maybe they will wipe out most of another country and the spreading fallout will kill lots of innocent folks in others and their own borders, but if that’s what happens, so be it.

    If there was ever a case for very surgical strikes on foreign countries to take out their nuclear capabilities, we are coming very close to that point. The needs of the many will out-weigh the needs of the few.

    Unfortunately, we have a limp d*ick in the White house.

    God help us :o(

  11. Bettina says

    May 13, 2014 at 7:56 pm

    Yesterday Ayaan Hirsi was interviewed on the Kelly File. Among other things, she said she believes islam can be reformed. Kelly’s producers evidently whispered in her ear to mention that Hirsi herself was a known victim of FGM and other horrors.
    Those remarks were obviously intended to impugn Hirsi’s credibility. I don’t understand this manipulation.

    • bernie says

      May 13, 2014 at 9:15 pm

      In her article “The War Against Christians”, Ayaan Hirsi Ali mentioned that many extreme Muslims believe that Christians in Pakistan couls be accused of blasphemy simply for saying, “Jesus is God.” Likewise, Hindus could be charged with blasphemy there for expressing their belief in Hindu polytheism.
      Sikhs are monotheists, but they generally don’t regard Mohammed as a prophet.

  12. Clare says

    May 13, 2014 at 10:10 pm

    Our President has a lot in common with the whim of lawless Islam and how it works; I have a pen and I have a phone.

  13. Bezelel says

    May 13, 2014 at 11:04 pm

    Stop the “MISUSE” of blasphemy laws? I can’t say much when the US has a Pres. that says the future must not belong to blah blah blah.

  14. Lookmann says

    May 14, 2014 at 1:27 pm

    Blasphemy is business for the muslims who lack in skills that generate revenue.Land and other properties of ‘ kaffirs’ are normally their attractions ,apart from ‘kaffir girls’.

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