Dilip Simeon's blog

The Supreme Court on Wednesday acquitted Asia Bibi, a Christian woman condemned to death on blasphemy charges after accepting her 2015 appeal against her sentence. A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Mian Saqib Nisar, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa and Justice Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel had reserved its ruling on Asia Bibi's final legal appeal against execution (Asia Bibi v. The State, etc) on October 8. The appeal challenged the Lahore High Court’s October 2014 verdict upholding a trial court’s November 2010 decision sentencing Bibi to death for committing blasphemy in 2009. What you need to know about Asia Bibi's trial Human rights in Pakistan - the continued persecution of Asia Bibi Asia Bibi's final appeal against blasphemy to be heard in Pakistan Supreme Court TLP threatens to paralyse country if Asia Bibi is acquitted "The judgement of the high court and that of the trial court is reversed," said the CJP in court, adding th...

NB - My question is rather, why should only Christian religious organisations be left to agitate on behalf of this poor persecuted woman? The  Pakistani activist Rashid Rehman was recently shot dead for fighting on behalf  of blasphemy suspects. He  was defending Junaid Hafeez, a university lecturer accused of blasphemy, who continues to languish in jail. Fanatics in Bangladesh are demanding the death penalty for atheist bloggers.  Do such persons not deserve our solidarity?  Should not human rights defenders all over South Asia and the world take up these cases? - Dilip Blasphemy in Pakistan: Why is Asia Bibi still in jail? Four years ago, Asia Bibi was asked to fetch water while working in the fields. Some of her Muslim fellow workers refused to drink it because they considered it to be “unclean” since it was collected by a Christian. A dispute ensued and her co-workers complained that she blasphemed against the Prophet Muhammad. Then she was arreste...

NB: Utter barbarism has been unleashed in both Pakistan and India in the name of religion. It was bad enough before, it is getting worse by the day. Today even to speak of peace, justice to all, and compassion for the weak, is enough to get us abused for 'blasphemy', anti-nationalism, etc. Those of us who have not yet sacrificed our consciences at the altar of nation-worship and communal demagoguery should speak loudly and clearly in defence not only of Aasia Bibi, but of all those who are being targeted for belonging to a 'minority' or for speaking their minds - DS LAHORE: The Supreme Court is due to hear the final appeal against the execution of Asia Bibi, accused for blasphemy, on Thursday. Some insist it is not just a fight for one life, but a battle for the nation's soul as the state walks a razor-sharp line between upholding human rights and appeasing populist hardliners. This will be the final appeal for Asia Bibi, some six years after she was sentenced ...

Asia Bibi, the Christian farm labourer who spent eight years on death row in  Pakistan  for blasphemy, is expected to leave the country after the supreme court upheld her acquittal. The court on Tuesday rejected a challenge to  October’s ruling  brought by an extreme Islamist party, which led violent protests across the country in the autumn and called for Bibi to be killed. Bibi, who has been held at a secret location since her death sentence was overturned, could be flown out of the country within hours. Two of her children  are reportedly already in Canada , which has offered Bibi asylum. After the ruling, Bibi’s lawyer, Saiful Malook, suggested that she could leave Pakistan imminently. “I think at this time she is here [in Pakistan] – but by tonight, I don’t know,” he told reporters outside the court. Extremists had “said they would kill her despite the judgment of the supreme court. Therefore, I think she should leave the country.” The supreme court’...

NB : This is a government and a polity of misogynists and murderers, pure and simple. In the words of a former editor of Dawn, it has gone insane. Millions of men are thirsting for the blood of a poor and helpless woman labourer. Shame on you.  DS Pakistan’s government has been accused of signing the “death warrant” of Asia Bibi after it said it would begin the process of preventing her leaving the country. Bibi, a Christian farm labourer, was acquitted of blasphemy on Wednesday. She had spent eight years on death row after she drank from the same cup as a Muslim, prompting false allegations that she insulted the prophet Muhammad. Bibi’s lawyer, Saif-ul-Mulook, has reportedly since fled the country amid fears for his life, telling AFP: “I need to stay alive as I still have to fight the legal battle for Asia Bibi.” Asia Bibi: anti-blasphemy protests spread across Pakistan The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) administration signed an agreement with the anti-bla...

A Pakistani court’s decision to uphold the death sentence against a Christian woman convicted on blasphemy charges is a grave injustice, Amnesty International said. The Lahore High Court today rejected the appeal against the death sentence imposed on Asia Bibi, who was sentenced to death in 2010 for allegedly making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammad during an argument with a Muslim woman. See: Human rights in Pakistan - the continued persecution of Asia Bibi “This is a grave injustice. Asia Bibi should never have been convicted in the first place – still less sentenced to death – and the fact that she could pay with her life for an argument is sickening,” said David Griffiths, Amnesty International’s Deputy Asia Pacific Director. “There were serious concerns about the fairness of Asia Bibi’s trial, and her mental and physical health has reportedly deteriorated badly during the years she has spent in almost total isolation on death row. She should be released i...

NB : Saif ul Malook is the kind of person who keeps alive our faith in humanity; and strengthens our resolve to confront all kinds of fanaticism. Salaam Janaab. Your courage is an inspiration to all decent people, of all countries and of whichever faith. May God protect you and Asia Bibi. Dilip Saif ul Malook fought to keep Pakistan from hanging a Christian woman accused of insulting the Prophet Mohammed. He won. But now she - and he - are in fear for their lives. 'Asia Bibi was a poor, helpless woman. No lawyer in Pakistan is likely to indulge in such cases,  because this means you have to leave the life and liberties you have known behind you and putting your life in fear. But they are helpless and powerless and somebody has to stand for them. So I stood for them.'   For almost nine years, the name of an illiterate peasant woman in Pakistan came to symbolize the brutal intolerance that exists in a nation where blasphemy is a capital crime. Asia Bibi, also known...

Asia Bibi  has arrived in Canada  hoping to start a new life after her years on death row. But although there is huge relief among campaigners for religious freedom that she is out of Pakistan, her ordeal may not be over. Islamic extremists have pledged to pursue the Christian woman and kill her for the act of blasphemy of which she was accused and later acquitted. Bibi may spend the rest of her days looking over her shoulder in fear of an international assassin. More posts on Asia Bibi Bibi’s backstory is well known after international attention was focused on her case. The former farm labourer was sentenced to death on flimsy evidence in 2010 after being accused of blasphemy in a dispute with Muslim women in her village over a cup of water. Two Pakistani politicians were later killed for publicly supporting her and criticising the country’s draconian blasphemy laws. She won the support of Pope Francis and Christian organisations around the world. Eventually la...

NB : What brave men the Pakistani Islamo-fascists are! They want to murder a woman labourer on mere hearsay, despite the judgement of their Supreme Court that there was no evidence to convict her of blasphemy. Not satisfied with robbing her of 9 years of her life, they want to bring their country to a standstill until they see her dead. What a wonderful example of the love of God and of justice. Now the government of Pakistan is vacillating over allowing her to leave her god-forsaken country. What use is an SC judgement setting her free if she is to remain in fear of her life? The spectacle of a nuclear-armed country terrorising a poor working woman in order to appease state-backed communal hooligans is pathetic. Pakistan has reduced Islam to a misogynist death-cult.  DS Thousands of Islamist protesters have brought Pakistan to a standstill, burning rickshaws, cars and lorries to protest against the  acquittal of a Christian woman  who spent eight years on death r...

Anyone will be moved by the latest book by Harris Khalique, one of Pakistan’s leading intellectuals, Crimson Papers: Reflections on Struggle, Suffering, and Creativity in Pakistan (2017), especially the chapter about women killed by men fired by a religion on the basis of which they claim Pakistan was created. Of course you have to leave aside  Benazir Bhutto , the political icon, to focus on the less renowned but extraordinary women who didn’t fit the paradigm of Pakistan. It is the sense of waste that makes one write with pain today. Khalique tells about Shabana, a pretty singer-dancer of Swat, who wouldn’t heed warnings from the Taliban to give up her “sinful” life. Her folks had done it for ages in Swat’s friendly valley - friendly because the people there were mild and tolerant. It is only when a coalition of religious parties came to rule in Peshawar - the capital of the province that administered Swat - that the Pakistan’s ideology started taking hold and the Taliban b...

Junaid Hafeez, a university lecturer in Pakistan, had been imprisoned for six years when he was  sentenced to death  in December 2019. The charge: blasphemy, specifically insulting Prophet Muhammad on Facebook.  Pakistan has the world’s second strictest blasphemy laws after Iran, according to  U.S. Commision on International Religious Freedom .  Hafeez, whose death sentence is under  appeal , is one of about  1,500 Pakistanis  charged with blasphemy, or sacrilegious speech, over the last three decades. No executions have taken place. But since 1990  70 people have been murdered  by mobs and vigilantes who accused them of insulting Islam. Several people who defend the accused have been 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 Prophet Muhammad. Though Bibi was  acqui...

Before India’s “love jihad”, Pakistan found its way to getting rid of its Christians. Blasphemy was pinned on them with the confidence that no judge would let them off the hook, with pious crowds demanding death outside his court. Pakistan’s most humiliating moment is reached every time someone is accused of blasphemy and sentenced to death. Proof is not needed; the court is just too scared to let the accused go, as happened in the case of Junaid Hafeez , a “visiting” faculty member at the English department of Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan, who was sentenced to death by a court in Multan in 2019 after being arrested in 2013. He was a Fulbright scholar with a Master’s from Jackson State University. It is easy to convict people for blasphemy because the law says an insult to the Prophet PBUH can take place even by innuendo. Asia Bibi’s plight retrains the spotlight on Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law Then, there are the clerics who can scare any judge if they think he is getting s...

When Malala Yousafzai and her companions were shot by the Taliban, the whole of Pakistan expressed outrage. The attack on a young girl fighting for her right to education was shocking to many Pakistanis.  What was unusual about this event was, unfortunately, not the targeting of girls, but the fact that there was a national outcry. No such outrage was expressed when Asia Bibi, a poor Christian woman was charged with blasphemy. Asia Bibi  is facing the death penalty and there are fears for her safety even if she were acquitted and released, as  people charged with blasphemy are often killed or may  ‘die’ in custody. They are not only being persecuted by the State but are at grave risk, even while they are in the custody of the state [1] . No-one has yet been brought to justice for the death   of the former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, although she herself, had named suspects in the Taliban and clearly predicted that her death would be the result not...