Here is yet another example of why we don’t see more genuine Muslim reformers. Shakil Auj’s crime was saying that non-Muslim men should be able to marry Muslim women — a challenge to the supremacist Islamic law that endeavors to ensure that Muslim communities will always be growing and non-Muslim communities will always be in decline. For that, he is dead. And if he had lived in the U.S., of course, he would long ago have been dismissed as a “hatemonger” and a “bigot.”
“Pakistani academic accused of blasphemy shot dead in Karachi,” by Andrew Buncombe, the Independent, September 19, 2014 (thanks to Pamela Geller):
A Pakistani academic known for promoting liberal views on Islam has been shot dead by gunmen – two years after being accused of committing blasphemy in a speech he made in the US.
Dr Muhammad Shakil Auj, Dean of the faculty of Islamic Studies at the University of Karachi, was attacked by two gunmen on a motorbike as he was making his way in his car to a function at the city’s Iranian cultural centre. A junior teaching colleague was also hit and suffered an injury to her arm.
“A bullet pierced through his head, proving fatal,” senior police officer Pir Mohammad Shah told the Associated Press. “We are investigating the killing. It would be premature to state the motive at the moment.”
The 54-year academic was known as someone who had spoken out on many issues in Islam and written several articles. One of the articles had suggested Muslim women should be allowed to marry non-Muslim men. He had also said Muslim women did not need to remove lipstick or make-up before going to prayer.
In 2012, Mr Auj, 54, had complained to police that four colleagues from the university had threatened him and sent him text messages accusing him of blasphemy. They had claimed a speech he had made that year in the US amounted to blasphemy.
One of the academics he complained about had previously held his position within the department. The four men face charges but are currently out on bail, according to reports.
Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, introduced under British rule and then tightened during the years of military dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, have become increasingly controversial and ever more deadly. Campaigners say that the laws, which carry the death penalty, are routinely used to settle personal scores and grudges that have nothing to do with Islam.
While no-one has ever been executed for blasphemy, many accused have been attacked and killed and lawyers and judges have been threatened. A recent report by a US government advisory panel said there were 14 people on death row in Pakistan and 19 others serving life sentences for insulting Islam.
Among those on death row is a 70-year-old British citizen, Muhammad Asghar, from Edinburgh, who was sentenced in January after being convicted of claiming he was a prophet. His lawyers and family said he has been suffering from mental health issues for several years.
Efforts to reform the laws by Pakistan’s previous government were scrapped in the aftermath of the murder in January 2011 of Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab province, where Multan is located, who had spoken about the misuse of the laws and the need to reform them. A second politician, the then-minorities minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, who also supported reforming the laws, was murdered two months later.
In May this year, the lawyer for another academic who had been accused of blasphemy was shot dead in the city of Multan. Rashid Rehman had agreed to represent Junaid Hafeez, a lecturer at Multan’s Bahauddin Zakariya University, who had been accused of defaming the prophet Mohammed on social media last year.
Reports said the accusations were levelled by hardline university students who had pushed for him to be charged. Mr Rehman took on the case after no other lawyer would represent the lecturer.
In Karachi, students held a demonstration in protest over Thursday morning’s killing of their teacher. They demanded the authorities do more to protect teaching staff. One placard being carried by students, read: “The murder of a teacher is a murder of the whole society.”
John C. Barile says
Pakistan is a disease-bearing swamp of ignorance, intolerance, and squalor. A true Islamic paradise.
KrazyKafir says
India’s sewer.
pumbar says
With nukes.
mortimer says
Couldn’t agree more. Pakistan is a PERFECT example of Islam as a society: dysfunction, discrimination, danger, delusion, dishonesty, dehumanization, SOCIOPATHY.
R Cole says
Yeah, that – killing of one equals killing of all mankind.
Sound a little like one of those time loop scenarios – if you could go back and somehow kill your grandparents….
That if it were true – Muhammad’s killing one – would have reverberations over time – and meant that he killed the many – possibly a few thousand times over.
Which means in theory that
weIslam should not exist!Jaladhi says
This is why efforts to reform Islam do not go anywhere – the so called “moderate” Muslims rise up and kill them following Mo/allah’s orders to kill those who ask to change allah’s sacred words. Morons!!
But Shakil Auj, Dean of faculty of Islamic Studies, was brave calling for change in Islam while living in the most terrorist city in the world. It is as if the whole city of Karachi is a haven for terrorists.
Christine Godinet says
They are a very confused bunch aren’t they. In some muslim countries they encourage muslim women to marry Christian men.
They are told to say that they will convert to Christianity once married and then to refuse to.
Their husbands then must relinquish all they own to the Muslim elders and their children must be raised Muslim.
Yet another hypocracy – considering they say that children must be raised in the religion of their fathers.
Seems this only applies if the father is muslim.
As in Miriam Ibrihams case – the childrens father didnot come into the equation at all, because he was not a muslim, rather authorities wanted the children raised in the religion of her coward father who left his family to fend for themselves when she was very young.