Search Results for: blasphemy law

Law students and law graduates in Pakistan are reporting for JURIST on events in that country impacting its legal system. Mashal Asim Khan is an LLB student in the University of London  External Programme at The Institute of Legal Studies (TILS). She files this from Islamabad.  On Thursday last week, July 20th, there was yet [...]

A man was stoned to death Monday in northwest Nigeria after being accused of blasphemy, raising concerns about escalating threats to religious freedom in the region. Local authorities confirmed the incident with a statement on Sunday, saying: On 25th June 2023 at about 0955hrs, a distress call was received at about 0920hrs that one Usman [...]

American author Edward Bellamy once described history as a cyclical process that “returned to the point of beginning”, claiming “the idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analog in nature.” Unfortunately, this perfectly encapsulates the current state of affairs in Pakistan. Politics in Pakistan seem to [...]

Civil action and criminal prosecution are the two great substitutes invented by law to replace revenge, a deeply wired instinct among humans expressed in a Mesopotamian maxim, an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. In Pakistan, most ironically, civil litigation and criminal prosecution have become the revenge instrument, particularly among ruling elites fighting [...]

Law students and law graduates from Pakistan are reporting for JURIST on events in that country impacting its legal system. Here, Eisha Chaudhry, a law student from Islamabad pursuing her LL.B. program at the University of London, reflects on former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s remarks last weekend at a mass rally in Rawalpindi at the [...]

Law students and law graduates in Pakistan are reporting for JURIST on events in that country impacting its legal system. University of London law graduate Mariyam Taher Qayyum files this dispatch from Islamabad.  Religious extremism is on the rise once again in Pakistan, a country that is persistently condemned for its disregard for human rights. The [...]

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Monday released its 2022 annual report, which noted “significant regress” in countries such as Afghanistan and the Central African Republic. As part of its report, USCIRF recommended that the US Department of State designate 15 countries as “countries of particular concern” (CPCs), as their governments are involved [...]

A Pakistan anti-terrorism court (ATC) Monday sentenced six people to death and nine people to life in prison for the lynching of Priyantha Kumara, according to reports from local news outlets. In a press conference, Punjab Prosecution Department Secretary Nadeem Sarwar also said Judge Natasha Nasim sentenced 72 people to two years in jail, sentenced [...]

The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, announced Sunday that he had ordered full action be taken against a mob who lynched a mentally ill man for burning pages of the Qur’an in Khanewal district of Punjab last week. The man was arrested for a violation of Pakistan’s strict anti-blasphemy laws, which penalize defiling a [...]

A Pakistan sessions court in Rawalpindi Wednesday sentenced a Muslim woman to death for committing blasphemy by insulting Prophet Muhammad over WhatsApp messages. Aneeqa Atteeq was accused of sending blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Muhammad and making remarks about holy personages on WhatsApp while also using her Facebook account to post blasphemous materials to others. The [...]