Who’s pulling the Pakistan prime minister’s strings?
by James M Dorsey, UnHerd:
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has wasted no time in making blasphemy legislation one of his first priorities, empowering militants and initiating international moves, long sought by Saudi Arabia, that would restrict press freedom across the globe.
In his first address as PM to the Pakistani Senate, he said he intended to raise the blasphemy issue in the United Nations and would work to achieve a “common policy” within the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).1
Likewise campaigning before his election, Khan said: “We are standing with Article 295c and will defend it,” referring to the blasphemy clause in the constitution that mandates the death penalty for any “imputation, insinuation or innuendo” against the Prophet Muhammad.
This clause has been used to victimise minorities, including Shiites – who account for up to a quarter of the population – as well as the country’s small communities of Ahmadi Muslims, Christians and Hindus. It has acted as a means to whip crowds into a frenzy and at times turn them into lynch mobs; it has inspired vigilante killings. It is also used to intimidate journalists in the country, threatening freedom of the press and free speech.
The new prime minister’s backing for the clause came as no surprise to South Asia scholar Ahsan I. Butt, who noted shortly after the election that “Khan’s ideology and beliefs on a host of dimensions are indistinguishable from the religious hard-right”.
In fact, Khan’s move was a carefully calculated political gambit on two levels. It caters to the anti-blasphemy sentiment widely shared among Pakistanis, including the Islamist militants whose popularity in the election displaced Khan’s main rival, thereby playing a key role in his electoral victory.2
But it also sends a sign to Saudi Arabia, which has been quietly campaigning for more than decade for a global law that would punish blasphemy.
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