The stories of accusations, of mobs, arrests, and assassinations all attest to the truth of this. An accusation of blasphemy is flammable; once uttered it catches fire and burns on the fuels of fears and engulfs all reason. The parameters of proof can be flimsy, if they exist at all. An absent-minded teacher copying for her students one part of one page and then, mistakenly, another part of another can stand accused, leaving a school burned, a principal jailed, and students uneducated. The improper disposal of a business card can condemn another. An argument with a fruit vendor, an altercation with a neighbor’s wife, owning a better car, getting a better job, or wedding a coveted bride have all in recent days transformed into allegations of blaspheming against faith.
Once accused, the subject becomes leper-like and untouchable; bearing a lethal contagion that can kill by association and deliver assassinations with unseen ease. In a society where little is clear and too much uncertain, the blasphemy accusation delivers the clarity everyone craves. Mobs gather around the accusers, adding their voices to theirs, and following with fervor this easy recipe to become righteous. The truth is not important; the catharsis of condemnation is what the collective demands. Their hunger drives them to stand outside courthouses, to gather outside police stations, to determine what is just by what is rumored.
Onto this flaming conflagration of fear, the Council of Islamic Ideology has attempted to throw some water. This past Wednesday, September 18, 2013, the 192th Islamic Ideological Conference commenced at the Council of Islamic Ideology in Islamabad. According to press releases and newspaper reports from the convening of the CII, the task of which is to insure that life in Pakistan can proceed according to Islamic principles, some amendments were suggested to the blasphemy law whose misuse the attendees recognised. The changes suggested by the scholars to the blasphemy law include the imposition of the death penalty on those who make false accusations of blasphemy. With the death penalty imposed on both those standing accused and those making accusations, the scholars may have estimated, the deadly calculus of the blasphemy accusation can be balanced.
Death, then, is meant to be the deterrent, the giving of pause to the finger pointer, the accusers, the mobs, and the rumour-mongers to consider the what-ifs, the consequences if their allegations are not being substantiated. In a country where vengeance seems to be understood as the sole basis of justice, this recommendation aims to equalise the balance of death on either side of the equation. In that, it is an improvement. However, if the reality of frivolous accusations is one of the current qualms against the blasphemy law, the other is the near impossibility of conducting legal proceedings in blasphemy cases. As the denouement of numerous blasphemy cases demonstrates, the proceedings are constantly stalled because of the threats faced by lawyers and judges.
Those accused face a high likelihood of being killed while in prison, long before the truth or falsity of the charges is ever proven. If legal proceedings on such a flammable issue were indeed possible, then the result, proof for whether an accusation is true or false, could be the basis for future punishment. As it happens now, the accused is usually convicted the moment the accusation is made. If the accuser is clever enough to know this, the possibility of being proven a liar, and then being sentenced to death for it, may be a possibility too remote to matter.