The Guardian view on religious intolerance: a sin against freedom
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Version 0 of 1. The murder of Salman Taseer was in a literal sense a crime against humanity even if in a legal sense it was just another of the innumerable murders that have disfigured Pakistan in recent decades. He was the governor of the Punjab, who was killed by one of his own bodyguards, Mumtaz Qadri, because he had denounced the dreadful blasphemy laws that have been successively rewritten, widened, and made more stringent under Islamising governments since 1980 so that now people can be executed merely for “using derogatory words in respect of the Holy Prophet”. On Monday, Qadri was hanged in conditions of secrecy. On Tuesday, vast crowds attended his funeral to demonstrate their support for this murderer’s crime. Nor was this support confined to Pakistan. One of the largest mosques in Birmingham said special prayers for Qadri, describing him as “a martyr”, as did influential preachers in Bradford and Dewsbury. These have been strongly and rightly criticised by other British Muslims, and no doubt represent a minority view, but it is disappointing that there are still some imams who have learned little about mutual tolerance in the 25 years since the Rushdie affair, however much mainstream majority Muslim views have moved on. The murder of Salman Taseer was a rare, high-profile moment in the struggles around the Pakistani blasphemy laws. He was rich, powerful and well-connected. None of that saved him, but most of the victims are poor and powerless members of minority sects, whether Christian, Hindu, Ahmadiyya or even Shia Muslims. Minorities are 10 times more likely to be the target of these laws than are Sunni Muslims. In 2014, the courts sentenced three people to death, six to life imprisonment, and three to determinate jail terms, all for something that should not be a crime at all. This judicial persecution overlays and legitimises far wider unofficial persecution of minorities. The judge who sentenced Qadri for murder had to flee the country immediately afterwards to save his own life. Nearly two-thirds of Pakistani Muslims support the death penalty for leaving their faith, something that must of course involve blasphemy since it involves a renunciation of Muhammad’s status. It would be wrong, though, to suggest that the restriction of religious freedom or persecution on grounds of blasphemy is purely or even largely a Muslim phenomenon. Islam may be unfortunate, in that the stringency can more easily be read out of its holy texts than seems to us to be the case with Christianity. But Muslims around the world themselves face persecution for their faith, perhaps most violently in Myanmar. We should not forget that one of the frontrunners for the American presidency owes some of his popularity to a proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the US at all. In Russia, it is the Orthodox church that has led the persecution of both Christians of other denominations and of atheists: one man is facing a year in jail for calling the Bible “complete bullshit” in an argument online. There is a dreadful irony in this, considering the persecution of the Orthodox church under communist rule. Even in western Europe, where the ideals of tolerance are rooted in a dreadful history of intolerance, there are signs of some liberal beliefs being used as purity tests to determine who is or is not a full member of society. The most frightening thing about all these attempts to enforce religious purity and like-mindedness is their popularity. There are votes in bigotry and exclusion. It is not just the terrifying levels of intimidation that operate in Pakistan that keeps the law in place, but widespread democratic support. This looks like a reversal of all the great hopes of the closing decades of the 20th century and it is, but it is not an irreversible trend. The rise of this kind of exclusion is often an angry reaction against the insecurities of globalisation, the spread of women’s rights, and the rapid social change these bring. The market tends to replace traditional allegiances and duties with contracts freely entered into, and this is profoundly threatening when the only contracts on offer are rigged, or offer nothing in the way of dignity or pride. Traditional religion offers both, at least for men. No wonder that it rises everywhere in reaction to the modern world. Still, we can do better, and we must. Human dignity demands the right to question, to be mistaken, and even sometimes laugh about beliefs. Only on the basis of that kind of equality extended to all can we make a more just world. |