Another Week, Another Dispatch – Ready?

Here it is.

This week’s Unbelief Brief covers a tragic murder in Pakistan, a noteworthy blasphemy arrest in the same country, and a proposed blasphemy law in the UK.

Meanwhile, the Persecution Tracker dives deeper into the details of the blasphemy arrest in Pakistan.

Unbelief Brief

As profiled in Volume 22 of this newsletter in October, a Pakistani doctor named Shahnawaz Kumbhar was murdered in September by police after being accused of blasphemy by a local cleric. Following Dr. Kumbhar’s murder, police officials attempted a cover-up claiming he had been killed in a “shootout.” The incident has reverberated throughout Pakistan: despite vigilante killings over blasphemy becoming increasingly common in the country, the fact that police are now perpetrators of this type of violence has created shockwaves. A new video report from France 24 explores the incident and its aftermath in more depth, including testimony from family members of the victim. It’s only 5 minutes and well worth your time; you can watch it here.

More recently, in a new blasphemy case in Pakistan, police successfully protected a blasphemy suspect from being murdered by an angry mob. After being charged and then arrested for insulting the Qur’an, hundreds of protestors blocked a roadway near the police station and demanded the man, named Humayun Ullah, be handed over to them to be lynched. Police did not comply and managed to protect the man by dispersing the crowd. Unfortunately, the larger issue here is the man’s arrest in the first place, enforcing the deeply unjust and backward legal code of Pakistan.

Finally, trouble may be brewing in the UK as one Labour MP has suggested that Parliament pass what would amount to new blasphemy laws. An exchange in the House of Commons appeared to “open the door” to such legislation, as MP Tahir Ali asked Prime Minister Starmer whether he would commit to legislation in Britain that would criminalize the “desecration” of religious texts. MP Ali’s suggestion mirrors blasphemy laws from most Muslim and Muslim-majority countries that are frequently used to target religious minorities regardless of whether they actually did what they were accused of. The Prime Minister was fairly non-committal in his answer, condemning the desecration of scripture while leaving ambiguous whether he would support legislation to criminalize “Islamophobia.” We here at EXMNA hope he will clarify that freedom of expression means the freedom to criticize belief systems—or, failing that, at least remain non-committal indefinitely.

Persecution Tracker Updates

Our entry on the above-mentioned blasphemy case in Pakistan can be found on our Persecution Tracker here.

Until next week,

The Team at Ex-Muslims of North America

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