Kot Radha Kishan minority lynching case: justice denied

In Pakistan, the state itself has become an important instrument for the oppression of minorities and whose biggest tool is the country’s draconian blasphemy laws. Under the guise of this law hundreds of members of the minority community have lost their lives in the past years. A similar incident was happened in 2014 in Kot Radhikishan where a Christian couple was murdered on the alleged charge of blasphemy and now making fun of the name of justice when an Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) in Lahore acquitted 20 people suspected of involvement in the lynching and burning alive of Christian couple who were accused of blasphemy in Kot Radha Kishan in 2014.

Shahzad and Shama were burned alive in a brick kiln by a frenzied lynch mob ─ incited by announcements made from mosques in the area ─ ranging between 400-1,000 people for their alleged role in the desecration of the Holy Quran in Nov 2014. Both husband and wife were brick kiln workers, and the woman, a mother of three, was pregnant at the time. Police had registered a case against 660 villagers after the incident.

The court today acquitted 20 suspects, giving them the benefit of doubt. Among the 20, 15 people were identified as Faryad, Babar Ali, Islamuddin, Zulfiqar Ali, Arshad Ali, Jawed, Abid, Sabir, Muhammad Sharif, Sarfraz, Sultan, Aftab, Muhammad Ashraf, Abid Hasan, Asif and Owais.

The ATC of Punjab province in Nov 2016 sentenced five men to death on two counts for their involvement in the burning alive of Shahzad and Shama. Eight others were also charged with involvement in the lynching and sentenced to two years each in prison. In 2015, the ATC had indicted 106 suspected in the lynching.

What the Blasphemy Law (clause 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code) says:

295-C – Use of derogatory remarks, etc., in respect of the Holy Prophet:

Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.

The law prescribes a fixed death penalty for all those who are found guilty. The option of life imprisonment was made defunct after a 1991 Federal Shariat Court judgement.

Is blasphemy a pardonable offense?

The answer, is not quite clear. The stance that ‘blasphemers who ask for a pardon would be spared the death penalty’ has already been established by the founder of the Hanafi school of thought, Abu Hanifa.

Within the Hanafi position, it simply does not go higher than Abu Hanifa, and it is the Hanafi school of thought that is foremost in significance in Pakistan, in terms of religio-legal debates in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Pakistan’s Federal Sharia Court and the Council of Islamic Ideology.

Moreover, a long line of students and followers of Abu Hanifa, legal heavyweights of their respective eras, further corroborated this position in many of their works. Centuries of Hanafi scholarship have maintained the same categorical answer to our original question: Yes, blasphemy is a pardonable offense. But as per the principles (usul) of the Hanafi jurisprudence, a consensus of Abu Hanifa and his students cannot now be challenged.

This is one of the primary principles of taqlid in traditional Islamic legal thought. The letter of the law 295-C makes no mention of the permissibility of pardoning a blasphemer.In fact, it is a Federal Sharia Court interpretation of the law that serves as the operational blueprint of the application of the law, which rules out pardon.

They considered the same sources as listed above, and somehow reached the opposite conclusion: that the authoritative position of Imam Abu Hanifa and his students is that blasphemy is not, in fact, a pardonable offense.