Convulsions of Piety
By Shehrbano Taseer
Aasia Noreen’s hand trembled as she placed her ink-stained right thumb on a piece of paper marked for Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, as the country’s founder, secularist Mohammad Ali Jinnah, peered down from his poker-faced portrait.
Languishing in Sheikhupura jail since June 2009, the illiterate mother of five is the first Pakistani woman to be given a death sentence on charge of blaspheming against Islam’s prophet. Since Nov. 20, the day she put her “signature” on the mercy petition, Noreen, 45, has become a lightning rod, arousing fervid sentiment across polarized Pakistan.
“These women were always harassing me about being Christian, and wanted me to convert,” says Noreen of the Muslim acquaintances in her hometown of Nankana Sahib (a place of religious significance for Sikhs) who went to a local cleric crying blasphemy. “I asked them to stop, and the next day I was picked up,” she told Newsweek Pakistan, her face hidden behind a veil. “I respect Prophet Mohammad [PBUH],” she adds.
Among Zardari’s ruling party, there is confusion. Sherry Rehman has tabled a bill seeking to amend the blasphemy laws, which were sharpened by dictator Gen. Zia-ul-Haq and, later, by his protégé, Nawaz Sharif. Her bill would make it difficult to misuse the laws. Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf made a similar attempt in 2000, but relented to pressure from clerics. Law minister and part-time televangelist Babar Awan has warned against such legislative efforts. This will not happen “in my presence as law minister,” he says.
Human rights organizations are demanding Noreen’s release, and protection. Even Pope Benedict XVI has weighed in and regretted Pakistan’s “violence and discrimination” against its Christian citizens. In May, the European Parliament adopted a resolution “welcoming the measures taken in the interest of religious minorities by the Government of Pakistan since November 2008,” but expressed “deep concern that the blasphemy laws ... are often used to justify censorship, criminalization, persecution, and, in certain cases, the murder of ... minorities.” The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has hailed the government’s 2009 decision to observe every Aug. 11 as “national minorities’ day,” but is concerned about the blasphemy laws.
From 1986 to 2009, some 479 Muslims, 340 Ahmadis, 119 Christians, 14 Hindus, and 10 others have been charged under the laws, according to the National Commission for Justice and Peace, an advocacy group set up by Pakistan’s Catholic bishops. No one convicted of blasphemy has ever been executed by the state, but 32 accused—and two Muslim judges—have been mowed down by Islamist vigilantes. Rights activists like Aslam Khaki, who represented transgendered citizens in the Supreme Court, says Noreen should be imprisoned for life, if she is guilty, but not pardoned or sent into exile abroad. The latter, he says, because she “will be a source of negative propaganda against the country and the religion, like Mukhtaran Mai.”
The apex court is maintaining its silence over Noreen, who is appealing her lower-court conviction. The few who have called for calm have done so at their own peril: fatwas have been issued against Zardari and the Punjab governor, warning them against leniency toward her.
The Islamists and their apologists seem determined to not even consider the possibility that Noreen may be innocent. Extending that benefit of the doubt, they think, would be blasphemy.
