Pakistan’s Minister for Minority Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti was assassinated on Wednesday for speaking out against the blasphemy laws designated under sharia law in the predominantly Muslim nation. Bhatti was gunned down on his way to the capital, after requesting to leave his security detail behind out of fear he would fall to the similar fate of former Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer. Taseer was assassinated in January by one of his bodyguards, also for opposing the blasphemy law and speaking out against the death sentence of a Christian woman.
The blasphemy law dates back to 1860 when India was under British rule, and was designed to protect Muslims against the Hindu majority when Pakistan and India were geographically combined. The Punjab region in Pakistan is home to the largest population of Christians and the most populated province in the nation. Like Kashmir, another volatile and disputed region to the north, it was partitioned from India during emancipation from British rule, and combined with additional territory to the south to become the nation-state of Pakistan in 1947.
When General Zia-ul Haq overthrew the existing government thirty years later in 1977 and enforced martial law in the nation, he pushed to require a more strict reverence to Islam, also known as sharia law, by changing the Pakistan Penal Code to enforce rules of blasphemy. What started as a disciplinary system for derogatory remarks against the religion in the early 80’s, finally turned into coded law in 1986 for blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad punishable by death.
Many Christians have been persecuted under the subjective blasphemy law, usually over land disputes and petty disputes turned vengeful in and around the rural areas of the Punjab. Less than a few short months after 9/11 as the United States invaded Afghanistan, 16 Christians were killed at a church during Sunday service many believed carried out by the Taliban faction in Pakistan. Most recently a Christian woman named Asia Bibi was tried in a district court of law and convicted to death for blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammad over a water dispute with Muslim farm workers.
When Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer appealed the decision, challenging the fatwa put out by “illiterate” clerics against him and Bibi, he received threats from extremists and was ultimately assassinated by one of his bodyguards, who said he murdered Taseer for his opposition to the Blasphemy Law.
In a haunting YouTube video recorded by Shahbaz Bhatti just a few months ago, he said that Al Qaeda and the Taliban “want to impose radical philosophy in Pakistan” including the Blasphemy Law and sharia Law, and he said he is “speaking for the oppressed and marginalized Christian minority,” finally stating he would give his life to stand against religious discrimination in his country.
Detroit has a rich population of immigrant and U.S. born Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa, including a small population from Pakistan - a pinnacle nation between the Middle East and Central and Southern Asia. According to research on foreign-born Pakistanis in America, about 2% of the diaspora population in America lives in Detroit. Khalid Rao, from the Pakistan Association of America located in Southfield, MI, estimates the number of Pakistani and Pakistani-Americans to be around 20,000 in the Detroit area. He did not know how many Pakistani Christians live in the area, but knows of a small population who do. In reference to the assassination of Shahbaz Bhatti, he said “it was for the wrong reasons and shouldn’t have been done.”
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