Abstract
Blasphemy charges are on the rise in Pakistan – and they often come with a death sentence.
THERE WAS NO light when I first saw Salma Tanveer’s family. Her husband, Tanveer Ahmed, was using a smartphone to talk to translator and activist M Aman Ullah and me via Zoom. Where they were there were no windows, dusty concrete, a few dim light bulbs, and what seemed like people in desperate need of help.
Salma is a 50-year-old mother-of-two. In September 2021, she was sentenced to death by hanging for blasphemy.
She was first registered in a blasphemy case by police in 2013 for violating the Pakistan Penal Code, where she was found to be distributing material that claimed that she was the Holy Prophet.
“We were frequently visited by local clerics to give religious teachings to the children,” explained her husband. “Salma frequently took notes and wrote down the speeches the clerics would give to the children.”
One day, as Salma was writing the notes, the local clerics got hold of them to review what she had written. When they saw them, they filed a report under the penal code to the local police station under clauses A, B and C – the written law that stated one cannot commit blasphemy and can be punished by death. In those notes, Salma had written that she was the true apostle. The penal code states that Mohammed is the one and only true apostle.
“But when the case was registered, they fabricated the story,” said Ahmed. “The photocopy of the notes had been changed and edited. They told the authorities that she wasn’t mentally fit.”
Salma had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder at the time the report was filed. But, despite the declaration, she has not been given treatment while in prison.
LEFT: A man reads the Koran in Karachi, Pakistan. The country’s population is deeply religious and has been persecuting those who challenge Islamic teachings in recent years
CREDIT: Akhtar Soomro/Reuters/Alamy
Her husband and Ullah have attempted to free her several times, including presenting her to the medical board where she had been declared a patient with schizoaffective disorder again. However, a doctor declared (in his opinion) that she was “70% fine and 30% not fine”.
Salma is currently awaiting her sentence to be carried out.
“I am helpless,” said Ahmed. “Five years ago, during the arrest, I had an accident where I broke one leg. I didn’t get medical treatment at the time. I was pursuing the case against my wife when militants approached me and told me that if I were to continue to pursue this case they would break my other leg. I continued, and they broke my other leg.
“My daughter tried to commit suicide. She now lives with burns.”
He walks over to the other side of the room to show me where his daughter lies on the bed. He lifts blankets and pulls at her clothes, where I see nothing but bandages covering her torso to her legs.
She needs to have “two or three” operations and her treatment costs him about $30 a day. The surgery for both of his legs will cost thousands of dollars.
“If I don’t operate on my leg, one is about to give out. It’s numb. I can’t feel it anymore,” he said.
Increased religious extremism started when the militant group known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – the Pakistani Taliban – was formed in 2007.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace states that the TTP is a Sunni Muslim group and its goals include establishing an Islamic political system based on its interpretation of sharia. Essentially, it would like to overthrow the government and replace it with a strict interpretation of Sharia.
The influence of religious extremist groups has spread across the country, with militant organisations forming in the more conservative cities.
And the threat of death by hanging as a result of a blasphemy charge is not unique to Salma Tanveer. A family of five – now three – were fighting these very groups by attempting to practise a more liberal form of Islam. Sehar, 28, Azad, 25, and Azan, 23, were three siblings living in Lahore, a city of approximately 15 million people.
“It is a very vibrant city,” said Sehar, who added that it is safer in their current location than the countryside. But their lives changed after the alleged murder of their parents as a backlash to their liberal religious and political views.
“In 2018, we were living in an area where we were one of the few families receiving an education. I was getting my education and I was one of the few liberals in the area as an educated woman,” explained Sehar. “People became jealous and started harassing me and started trying to stop me from getting an education. I do practise Islam as I am a believer of the religion, but I practise in a modern way.”
This modern way included freedoms not traditionally given to women, such as the freedom to pursue an education and a career. The local community did not like the way Sehar was practising, so they targeted her family.
“In Pakistan, there is a system where people send each other food, like sweet rice. Mother and father were home alone one day, and my mother ate the sweet rice that was delivered to her doorstep,” she said.
After she ate the rice, Sehar’s mother began developing breathing problems.
“I came to the house and took her to the hospital. The doctor said that she consumed something that attacked her lungs.”
When the siblings tried to file an application to investigate the details of their mother’s death, the neighbours and local clerics threatened them and said that if they filed one, the locals and the imam would file a blasphemy charge against the family.
The family obliged, not wanting to get in trouble. After their mother died, they went back to their normal routine, their jobs and universities. Then, one day when they returned home, they found their father on the floor of the house, dead.
Sehar thought someone had killed him by strangling him. The siblings wanted an investigation, but the clerics again threatened them with a blasphemy charge. “They said they would kill us if we did not leave our home and move away,” said Sehar.
Her brother was followed and attacked, so the family sent him to Dubai – but he had to return because he only had a tourist visa. All three are currently unable to move freely or live openly, staying in a safe house organised and supported by Ullah.
“In Pakistan, clerics are the religious leaders. They influence people. They have big networks in Pakistan and, because of the fear, the siblings are reluctant to go outside during the day,” said Ullah. In 2012, Pakistan had 27 blasphemy cases ongoing, which frequently targeted religious minorities. In 2020, it registered 199 blasphemy cases taken to higher courts, often with little or no evidence.
In 2012, Ullah became involved with the rising number of cases. He first came into contact with a woman called Walaiha, who was 21 and imprisoned on a blasphemy charge. He hired lawyers and tried to find media and journalists to write about the case and help them get her to safety. He was successful in getting her out of prison but, when she was freed, Ullah received death threats as a result of his work. The pair married and Ullah fled to the Maldives, then to Sri Lanka, then to Dubai. They split up eight months later and he returned to Pakistan.
After his success in helping Walaiha, many more blasphemy victims approached him. He was involved with the high-profile case of Asia Bibi, a Roman Catholic from a village near Lahore, who was accused by Muslim villagers of insulting the Prophet in a row over a cup of water in June 2009. It resulted in her spending eight years on death row before her release in 2018.
ABOVE: (left) Salma Tanveer, pictured with her children, and (right) Salma’s husband also with the children. Salma is currently in prison having been charged with blasphemy
CREDIT: Tanveer Ahmed
As many news organisations wrote, the country was shut down by protests based on the decision. Ullah’s house was attacked, and his sister’s wrist was broken. He fled the country with his mother and sisters in 2018, found Australian politicians who helped him, and then settled in Australia.
“I had to give up everything. I started a new life,” he said.
Now he is helping Salma and her family and these three siblings, among others, and wants to start a non-profit organisation to raise awareness of religious blasphemy.
“I want to devote my life to the betterment of the people of my country,” he said. “I have to fight. I need the support of Western leaders – people who are powerful. I want to spread education. To raise money.
“While I’m still trying to integrate into a new society, I’m still helping people in Pakistan because they believe I can help them.”
In the meantime, Salma remains in jail, a death sentence over her head for something that should never be considered a crime.