One of the beginnings of the story is thus, with Asia Bibi, a poor mother of five, a Christian - (wiki):
In June 2009, Asia Bibi, a farm hand from the village of Ittan Wali in Sheikhpura District, was asked to fetch water; she complied, but some of her fellow Muslim workers refused to drink the water as they considered Christians to be "unclean".
There was an altercation. There were words. Asia Bibi was accused of blasphemy and thrown into jail. As per Pakistan's blasphemy law, even repeating the words constitutes further blasphemy. As per one publication, Asia might have said, Jesus is alive and Muhammad is dead. We do not know. Asia was held in jail for an year, after which she was pronounced guilty of blasphemy with no mitigating circumstances, and sentenced to death by hanging.
Blasphemy laws are bad, and Pakistan's is particularly so. Some point out that no one has yet been executed for blasphemy. Asia Bibi might be the first. The law is such that it is used by people to harass and destroy their enemies. Just a few days ago, a doctor, Dr Noushad Ali Valliani, chucked the visiting card of a medical rep into the trashcan. The medical rep. was Mr Muhammad Faizan. Dr Valliani had dishonored the name of the Prophet, and formally charged with blasphemy. Such is the law.
Salman Taseer, governor of Pakistani Punjab, thought that injustice had been done to Asia Bibi.
“She is a woman who has been incarcerated for a year-and-a half on a charge trumped up against her five days after an incident where people who gave evidence against her were not even present. So this is a blatant violation against a member of a minority community. I, like a lot of right-minded people, was outraged, and all I did was to show my solidarity. It is the first time in the history of the Punjab that a governor has gone inside a district jail, held a press conference and stated clearly that this is a blatant miscarriage of justice and that the sentence that has been passed is cruel and inhumane. I wanted to take a mercy petition to the president, and he agreed, saying he would pardon Aasiya Bibi if there had indeed been a miscarriage of justice.”
There were howls of protest from Pakistani Islamists. Effigies of Taseer and of Sherry Rehman, a legislator who said that the blasphemy laws must be amended, were burnt at rallies. More ominously:
At a seminar titled ‘Protection of the blasphemy law and its importance’, Justice (r) Mian Nazeer Akhtar said Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer was also a blasphemer for he was protecting those who indulged in blasphemy.
Another religious outfit declared Taseer an apostate. (Traditionally, historically, the maximum penalty for apostasy and for blasphemy in Muslim-ruled societies has been death, definitely if the offender doesn't repent. Moreover, the mullahs pronounce such persons to be "Wajib ul Katl" - "obligatory to be killed". If the state doesn't execute the person, any one else can and thereby gain religious merit.)
Taseer stood firm. According to one of his tweets
I was under huge pressure sure 2 cow down b4 rightest pressure on blasphemy.Refused. Even if I'm the last man standing
On the afternoon of January 4, Salman Taseer was gunned down by one of his guards.
The guard, Mumtaz Qadri of the Punjab Elite Force, yelled out ‘Allah-o-Akbar’ and emptied two magazines of an SMG on the governor in the Kohsar Market before surrendering himself.
He later explained that he had killed Mr Taseer because of his recent criticism of the blasphemy law.
The killing of Taseer has provoked a lot of protest; but also a lot of support for the killer. At one time there were supposedly **three** Facebook pages up felicitating Qadri. {I should point out that an Internet user in Pakistan is hardly likely to be one of those "poor, illiterates misled by the mullahs".} I have no doubt that Qadri thinks he will enjoy the fame of "Martyr" Ilm-ud-Din.
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The story of the blasphemy laws has other beginnings. In 1927, the "Rangila Rasul" case (which made Ilm-ud-Din famous) roiled Punjab, and was making its way into the rest of India. The publisher of a scurrilous pamphlet ridiculing the Prophet, was acquitted under existing law of offending religious sentiment, and the Mohammedans were restive. The British Indian government needed a new instrument, and shamefully, Indian nationalists aided them in the Central Legislature in giving them one. The few really liberal members of legislature argued in vain that such a law was not needed; that religion did not need the protection of legislature. The threat though, was of violence - riots - if the government did not act. Then these members argued, again in vain, that the law should have an expiry date of 1930. But what ensued was section 295 of the British Indian Penal Code. After independence, in Pakistan, it was augmented with sections 295B, C, 298, to give the current mess.
The point here is that yield once to intimidation and you are headed down a slippery slope. Now the intimidation is thus (NYT)
A crippling strike by Islamist parties brought Pakistan to a standstill on Friday as thousands of people took to the streets, and forced businesses to close, to head off any change in the country’s blasphemy law, which rights groups say has been used to persecute minorities, especially Christians.
The law was introduced in the 1980s under the military dictatorship of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq as part of a policy of promoting Islam to unite this deeply fractious society. Many attempts to revise the law have since been thwarted by the strong opposition of religious forces, which continue to gather strength.
The British section 295 is in force in India, and as far as I know, it is used for intimidation; or government uses it to avert the threat of riots.
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I'd like to point out that Seattle-based cartoonist Molly Norris is in hiding with a changed identity, because she too "blasphemed" with her quickly withdrawn endorsement of "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day".
Free speech advocates of the leftist type don't take her plight seriously, because they see her as needlessly offending a beleaguered Muslim minority in the US of A. What these people do not understand is that it hardly matters that it is a minority of a minority, that is going to take e.g., mullah Anwar al-Aulaki's fatwa seriously - this is a threat deadlier than government efforts to squash inconvenient speech. You don't know when and wherefrom you are going to be attacked. As an SFGate article put it:
While WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is celebrating his $1 million-plus book deal on a 600-acre estate and enjoying his status as a lefty fringe hero, former cartoonist Molly Norris is in hiding.
The moral of this column is that in today's world, cartoons, if they target Islam, can be more hazardous to your health than crossing the mighty U.S. government and its allies.
I think free speech advocates forget that it is offensive speech that need protection; and that protection is needed more than from just the government. If they don't wake up, perhaps one day Salman Taseer will be seen to have been the last man standing.
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