In December 2021, Priyantha Diyawadanage, a 48-year-old Sri Lankan employed as a factory manager in the Pakistani city of Sialkot allegedly tore down a poster from the factory wall. This seemingly innocuous act was reportedly spurred by the knowledge that the factory building was about to be cleaned. What ensued was the stuff of nightmares. Diyawadanage was beaten by a mob numbering around a hundred and then set ablaze. Videos of the incident, captured on multiple mobile phones, show some in the crowd celebrating and taking selfies with Diyawadanage’s corpse.
What was Diyawadanage’s crime? Allegedly removing a poster that bore Prophet Muhammad’s name. For the mob that lynched him, Diyawadanage’s act amounted to insulting the Prophet, a crime pithily described as sabb al-rasul in Arabic. The commonly used Urdu equivalent is tawheen-e risalat; English lacks this phrase and the act of insulting Muhammad is commonly expressed in English as blasphemy.
This gruesome incident is far from an exception. Extrajudicial killings for the alleged act of blasphemy have become increasingly common in Pakistan, as have officially registered cases of blasphemy under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. Between 1987 and 2020 at least 1,855 individuals have been accused of offences related to religion (including insulting Muhammad) under the country’s blasphemy laws compared to just seven from 1927 to 1986. The past three decades have also witnessed an exponential rise in extrajudicial killings of alleged blasphemers, and particularly alleged Prophet-insulters. Only two alleged blasphemers were killed extrajudicially from 1946 to 1987. From 1987 to 2015, 57 alleged blasphemers were killed extrajudicially. Non-Muslim and Muslim minorities – Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis – are disproportionately targeted by these laws and gruesome extrajudicial acts. The laws are also used to settle religious and personal rivalries, at times by making false accusations.
In 2020, two hundred blasphemy cases were reported – the highest number in Pakistani history. The situation is currently so grim that it is not just the act of allegedly insulting Muhammad in this physical realm that merits punishment: in March 2022 three female teachers employed at a local religious seminary (madrasa) in Dera Ismail Khan in northwestern Pakistan murdered their colleague, Safoora Bibi. Their reason? One of the murderers’ relatives, a 13-year-old girl, claimed that she had been informed in a dream that Safoora Bibi had insulted Muhammad.
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