Our faulty narrative on blasphemy

I remember the November of 2007 very vividly. We were getting ready for school our father was going to drop me and my sisters. And he received one phone call that would change our lives forever. He immediately rushed out. Hours later we heard wailing of my aunt; my uncle had been shot dead.

Chacha, as we used to call him, owned a shop in main market of Attock and had been running it for several years. For some time he had been having trouble with another shop owner over business issues. And one day amid the rage, he shot him. My Chacha lay dead in the pool of his own blood shooting out of his head, belly and arm. He had been shot four times.

My small mind could not comprehend how it was possible for some one to be alive healthy and playing with us at one moment and cease to exist the next moment. Chacha was that figure of the family whom the kids, including me, absolutely adored. Every evening when he returned home from work, he used to bring us sweets, Kurkure, lays, chocolates and what not. It was many hours later till we got to see him, for the last time ever.

The man who had murdered my Chacha was immediately caught by people present at the place of crime. They were mostly other shop owners. They held him until the police arrived. The case was registered and went to court. There the lawyer of the culprit argued that he, the murderer was not mentally stable and according to the Mental Health Ordinance his punishment should be reduced.

Well to cut the story short, it was found that the party was trying to misuse the ordinance in their advantage, because well it was possible to do so. The man was issued life imprisonment.

13 years later, things have changed a lot. Today in Pakistan if some one kills another person, they don’t have to seek refuge in the laws regarding mentally unfit criminals. Instead, they can simply say that the person was murdered because he or she had committed blasphemy. Not only will the public forgive you for a crime as heinous as taking away the life of a person but also you will become a hero in their eyes as well.

Recently a bank manager was killed out of personal grudge by guard of the bank. The guard applied the same clever tactic; he accused the man he had murdered of blasphemy. In no time a huge crowd gathered around him, kissing and hugging him. He had, no doubt, become a hero in a matter of moments. People did not ask him the context of blasphemy; they didn’t need to. For, repeating a blasphemy is a blasphemy itself.

Do we need to change our narrative about blasphemy?