Accusations of witchcraft were common in the Middle Ages and renaissance Europe. A society immersed in superstition but also bothered about legal canons came up with the convoluted notion of Crimen Exceptum – a crime so exceptional that the established rules of justice need not be applied to it. Thus, an accusation was enough to allow torture, humiliation, and ultimately death. Thousands of people – both men and women – were charged with practicing witchcraft, and burnt or killed publically. In a number of cases, women were brutally tortured, and if they happened to survive, that was itself seen as proof that they were witches. They were then killed as a punishment for witchcraft.
Our Crimen Exceptum is blasphemy. A mere accusation can turn an innocent citizen into a dead man, a normal community into a blood thirsty mob, the noisy justice system into a silent spectator, and the State into a collaborator of injustice. The learned men of letters and law avoid talking about the violence, and some even justify it in a way similar to how Jean Bodin justified torture to extract confessions.
Like the witch hunts in Europe, this is a matter of superstition, self-righteousness and conspiracy theories. Since the victims are mostly minorities, there are allegations that they are foreign funded, anti-state, or part of a grand scheme against Islam. It doesn’t occur to the faithful that these hapless, scared, marginalized and ghettoized communities are not so foolish that they would risk the wrath of millions of charged bigots, when there are hardly any chances of survival after such a sacrilege. If the mob does not kill them, the legal system might.
The accusations are followed by violence, and violence makes law enforcement spring into action. But not against the violent. If those accused of blasphemy avoid an ignoble death at the hands of the mob, they are given an ignoble death by the law, such as in the Joseph Colony case in Lahore. Those who are not so lucky are burned alive, such as Shama and Shahzad in the Kot Radha Kishan area of Kasur, and the Ahmadi children in the People’s Colony neighborhood in Gujranwala.
The faithful who respond to the calls to murder are either not identified or make a quick round of jail and get back on with a proud life. The spoils of property also come as an encouragement.
Any conscientious souls who choose to defend the accused are the next targets. No lawyers rally in favor of due process, no media organizations speak in favor of freedom of speech, no politicians assert the equality of all citizens, and no laws extend their long arms to reach the extremists. There is not even a subtle mention that the accusations could be motivated by enmity, financial interests or a simple misunderstanding.
A blasphemy accusation is the most effective way of settling personal scores – between employers and employees, between the vulnerable citizens and their hostile competitors, between disgruntled workers against their more qualified colleagues, and between estranged relatives. Sometimes, it is simply an effort by the clergy to remain relevant.
Any defense for the accused is invariably seen as an offence to religion, not realizing that the greatest offence to the religion of peace is using it wrongfully for exploitation and violence.
A society in which killers are celebrated, terrorists are glorified, rapists are accepted and looters are beatified, only those accused in the name of faith are condemned alive. It is likely that a certain level of tolerance for violence in the name of religion is deliberate, so that people have convenient targets to vent their anger against.
The vicious cycle of misuse of law and public pressure results in social ostracizing of entire communities, and affects several generations. The number of the accused might be in thousands – a figure itself worth pondering over – but those who are traumatized are in millions. They live in fear and suffocation, and are always under threat.
Each new incident like that in Jhelum evokes a routine response, and that too mostly on the social media, where there is a possibility of getting away with speaking the bitter truth (despite attrition with zealots diligently monitoring the cyberspace too). The sporadic calls for stopping this trend of violence have also lost their meaning, in an overwhelming environment of resignation.
Europe got over bigotry, superstition and the war on heresy after the advent of modernity, but the picture in our society is bleak. In the squabbles over statutory laws and procedures, the wider picture of the laissez faire religious complex is conveniently missed. The belief in the supremacy of the edicts of the faith healer next door has made the formal legal system largely irrelevant. The authority of the state and the rule of law cannot be restored unless the dispensation of edicts is regulated, like the dispensation of justice.
Our Crimen Exceptum is blasphemy. A mere accusation can turn an innocent citizen into a dead man, a normal community into a blood thirsty mob, the noisy justice system into a silent spectator, and the State into a collaborator of injustice. The learned men of letters and law avoid talking about the violence, and some even justify it in a way similar to how Jean Bodin justified torture to extract confessions.
Like the witch hunts in Europe, this is a matter of superstition, self-righteousness and conspiracy theories. Since the victims are mostly minorities, there are allegations that they are foreign funded, anti-state, or part of a grand scheme against Islam. It doesn’t occur to the faithful that these hapless, scared, marginalized and ghettoized communities are not so foolish that they would risk the wrath of millions of charged bigots, when there are hardly any chances of survival after such a sacrilege. If the mob does not kill them, the legal system might.
The accusations are followed by violence, and violence makes law enforcement spring into action. But not against the violent. If those accused of blasphemy avoid an ignoble death at the hands of the mob, they are given an ignoble death by the law, such as in the Joseph Colony case in Lahore. Those who are not so lucky are burned alive, such as Shama and Shahzad in the Kot Radha Kishan area of Kasur, and the Ahmadi children in the People’s Colony neighborhood in Gujranwala.
A blasphemy allegation is the most effective way of settling personal scores
The faithful who respond to the calls to murder are either not identified or make a quick round of jail and get back on with a proud life. The spoils of property also come as an encouragement.
Any conscientious souls who choose to defend the accused are the next targets. No lawyers rally in favor of due process, no media organizations speak in favor of freedom of speech, no politicians assert the equality of all citizens, and no laws extend their long arms to reach the extremists. There is not even a subtle mention that the accusations could be motivated by enmity, financial interests or a simple misunderstanding.
A blasphemy accusation is the most effective way of settling personal scores – between employers and employees, between the vulnerable citizens and their hostile competitors, between disgruntled workers against their more qualified colleagues, and between estranged relatives. Sometimes, it is simply an effort by the clergy to remain relevant.
Any defense for the accused is invariably seen as an offence to religion, not realizing that the greatest offence to the religion of peace is using it wrongfully for exploitation and violence.
A society in which killers are celebrated, terrorists are glorified, rapists are accepted and looters are beatified, only those accused in the name of faith are condemned alive. It is likely that a certain level of tolerance for violence in the name of religion is deliberate, so that people have convenient targets to vent their anger against.
The vicious cycle of misuse of law and public pressure results in social ostracizing of entire communities, and affects several generations. The number of the accused might be in thousands – a figure itself worth pondering over – but those who are traumatized are in millions. They live in fear and suffocation, and are always under threat.
Each new incident like that in Jhelum evokes a routine response, and that too mostly on the social media, where there is a possibility of getting away with speaking the bitter truth (despite attrition with zealots diligently monitoring the cyberspace too). The sporadic calls for stopping this trend of violence have also lost their meaning, in an overwhelming environment of resignation.
Europe got over bigotry, superstition and the war on heresy after the advent of modernity, but the picture in our society is bleak. In the squabbles over statutory laws and procedures, the wider picture of the laissez faire religious complex is conveniently missed. The belief in the supremacy of the edicts of the faith healer next door has made the formal legal system largely irrelevant. The authority of the state and the rule of law cannot be restored unless the dispensation of edicts is regulated, like the dispensation of justice.