generalspeaking

Nothing quite sets Pakistan's Islamist fundamentalists alight with the fire of fury against non-Muslims than rumours of blasphemy against the Prophet, the Koran, or Islam. And while Pakistan has anti-blasphemy laws whose penalty for blasphemers is death, the fanatical political Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP) party, founded in 2017 to express the will of fundamentally-fierce Pakistanis, is to agitate for the death penalty for all who dare defy Islam.

An act of savage atrocity that Islamic State would be proud of was carried out in the industrial city of Sialkot, when Priyantha Kumara, in his 40s, who managed a factory producing cricket shirts, was dragged out into the street, beaten senseless, then set on fire. A mob had accused him of ripping up posters with sacred Islamic verses featured on them. And a rumour is all it takes, along with any kind of specious accusations to take the lives of people seen to be disrespectful of Islam.

Infamously, a few years ago a state governor was murdered by Islamists for defending the rights of the Pakistani Christian population who are often accused of blasphemy, and the death penalty demanded for them. A Christian woman, Asia Bibi, was working in a field alongside Muslim women who became angered because she drank out of a cup the Muslim women were using; a prohibition. She responded with a casual insult and was immediately accused of blasphemy, arrested and put on death row.

In this latest incident hundreds of locals gathered, chanting, taking selfies next to Sri Lankan Priyantha Kumara's burning body. The man had been general manager for eight years at the Rajco Industries factory. After he had been dragged out to the street, dozens beat him. Such accusations against non-Muslims are not uncommon in Pakistan, as a means of revenge against others by claiming them to be blasphemous, in the process settling a personal grievance. 

A mob in the town of Charsadda had torched a police station when officers had refused to hand over to them a man who had been accused of defacing a Koran, only days before. Such mobs feed off their Islamist rage, accusing Pakistan's minorities of insulting Islam. The TLP Islamist party had seen thousands of its workers march from Lahore to Islamabad in October to demand trade sanctions against France and that the French ambassador be expelled.

This, in reaction to the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a satirical magazine. Pakistan's government had arrested leaders of the TLP following a confrontation where Pakistani police fought with the party's members, where seven police were killed, dozens injured. By campaigning for death to be meted out to blasphemers, the party has been wildly successful in Pakistan, drawing in a huge, devoted following.

Recently, the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan saw fit to release the TLP leader, allowing the party to contest elections. Critics warned this would have the result of emboldening extremists. Following the mob murder of the Sri Lankan man, Pakistan's military issued a statement in condemnation of the "cold-blooded murder. Such extrajudicial vigilantism cannot be condoned", stated its press wing. In fact, the atrocity was not 'extrajudicial'; to name it so, gives it the legitimacy of 'vigilante justice'.

And Prime Minister Khan's statement that "The horrific vigilante attack on a factory in Sialkot and the burning alive of the Sri Lankan manager is a day of shame for Pakistan", rings equally hollow in the face of the reality that this was an inhuman crime committed by hundreds of Islamist Pakistanis, now given the cover of justification for their actions when the country's prime minister himself speaks of the accusation against the man as reflective of the country's blasphemy laws. 

 

Aside from the fact that he restored the political 'legitimacy' of the group, giving them a voice in the nation's politics, thus entitling a group whose precepts of Islamist jihad and 'justice' reveal echoes of those of the dreaded Islamic State.