by AHMET T. KURU
A Sri Lankan working in Pakistan, Priyantha Kumara, was lynched by a mob of hundreds of people on Dec. 3, 2021, over allegations of blasphemy, or sacrilegious act. After being assaulted, he was dragged into the streets and set on fire, and the lynching was recorded and shared widely on social media.
Such tragic killings in Pakistan over blasphemy accusations are not just about extrajudicial vigilantism. Pakistan has the world’s second-strictest blasphemy laws after Iran, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
In December 2019, Junaid Hafeez, a university lecturer, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani court on the charge of insulting the Prophet Muhammad on Facebook.
Hafeez, whose death sentence is under appeal, is one of about 1,500 Pakistanis charged with blasphemy over the past three decades. No executions have ever taken place.
But since 1990, 70 people have been murdered by mobs and vigilantes over allegations of insulting Islam. Several people who defended the accused were killed, too, including one of Hafeez’s lawyers and two high-level politicians who publicly opposed the death sentence of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman convicted for verbally insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Though Bibi was acquitted in 2019, she fled Pakistan.
Blasphemy and apostasy
Of 71 countries that criminalize blasphemy, 32 are majority Muslim. Punishment and enforcement of these laws vary.
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