Pakistani anti-blasphemy crusaders, often seen vowing to behead ‘blasphemers’ in the country, have now crossed the eastern border. Arrested by the Indian authorities in Rajasthan, 24-year-old Pakistani man Rizwan Ashraf, was plotting to kill Nupur Sharma, former spokesperson of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, over her recent remarks about Prophet Muhammad.
From the suburbs of Mandi Bhauddin in Punjab, Ashraf left his home before Eid-ul-Adha telling his parents that he was going to pay respects at a dargah. The small detail he left out was that the dargah (Ajmer) he wanted to visit was in India and would follow the visit up with his plan to take out Nupur Sharma. All of this in the name of blasphemy and “hurt religious emotions”.
There’s a pattern here
Belonging to the Islamist political group Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), Ashraf followed his leader Saad Hussain Rizvi’s call to go to India and behead Sharma for the love of the Prophet. Labbaik leader, in front of a charged audience, amid slogans gustakhe nabi ki aik he saza, sar tan se juda (the blasphemous have only one punishment, beheading) said how there are thousands ready to become Ilm Dins and Mumtaz Qadris—both blasphemy assassins revered as Ghazis (Muslim warriors) and saints in Pakistan with shrines dedicated to each in Lahore and Islamabad. Ashraf is being crowned a Ghazi even for being a would-be-assassin and at the least landing in India—something that is winning him accolades of Islamists who want to worship even the dust off Ashraf’s feet for his “valour”.
But this is not Rizwan Ashraf’s first rodeo. Last year, he was arrested in Lahore for vandalising the life-size statue of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. In the attack video, Ashraf is seen bringing down the figure of Ranjit Singh from the horseback, breaking its arm and smashing it while chanting religious slogans. Ashraf was arrested and booked under sections 295-A and 427 of the Pakistan Penal Code but later secured bail. Hate against Ranjit Singh is embedded in Tehreek-e-Labbaik’s ideology. Late founder Khadim Hussain Rizvi’s speeches would tell stories of how Muslim women were taken away and raped by Ranjit Singh and the mosques of Wazir Khan and Badshahi were used as stables during his reign. Demolishing the statue with chants was Rizvi’s idea—‘un-Islamic idols’ had no place in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
Over the last seven years, TLP has become synonymous with anti-blasphemy campaigns in Pakistan. When the political Islamist group is not seeking death for ‘blasphemers’, it is busy calling for expulsions of foreign diplomats and other times just demanding that the Pakistan government drop an atom bomb on countries ‘blaspheming’. Since the group’s birth in 2015, the increase in blasphemy attacks evidences the impact of TLP within and outside Pakistan when it comes to the subject.
Violence within and across borders
In 2018, The Netherlands arrested a Pakistani man who was plotting to kill a Right-wing Dutch MP Geert Wilders for announcing a $10,000 Prophet Muhammad cartoon competition. Inspired by the TLP, 26-year-old Junaid Gujjar vowed to send Wilders ‘to hell’ for insulting the Prophet. He travelled from France to Holland to stop the ‘blasphemous’ cartoon competition but only got arrested. That year, back in Pakistan, then Interior minister Ahsan Iqbal of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) survived an assassination attempt over the issue of Khatm-i-Nabuwwat (finality of prophethood) and introducing an electoral law amendment that led to a minor change in the oath of parliamentarians. His attacker, again in his early 20s, declared his affiliation with the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan.
Similarly, 21-year-old Khateeb Hussain, a university student who stabbed his professor to death in Bahawalpur over organising a welcome party that he deemed “anti-Islam”, was inspired by the speeches of Khadim Hussain Rizvi. He even shared his plot to kill the professor with another Labbaik leader. A school principal in the Charsadda district of Peshawar, accused of blasphemy, was also shot and killed by 20-year-old student Faheem Ashraf. He was said to be reprimanded by the principal for missing classes to attend the Tehreek-e-Labbaik protest. That was considered ‘blasphemous’ and reason enough to be killed.
There are no losers in this cause. Those sacrificing their lives to avenge blasphemy are then provided free legal aid and their families are promised financial support by religious groups. And the sons of assassins are considered ‘jaan nasheens‘ (successors) of the great cause.
Used and strengthened as a pressure group to destabilise political governments, Tehreek-e-Labbaik has the biggest weapon that no one has—the dagger of blasphemy. They are not only regularly fanning blasphemy violence at home, as in the case of the lynching of Sri Lankan manager Priyantha Kumara in Sialkot. But their exports of potential assassins are also reaching the neighbourhood beyond borders. Declared a terrorist entity and banned last year, then unbanned and taken off the terror list, should TLP interest the Financial Action Task Force to get people to understand the menace they’ve created? That will be the only way for the State of Pakistan to take TLP’s rise and ramifications seriously. Just like in the case of its other ‘asset’ Lashkar-e-Taiba. Till that happens, let’s take solace in the fact that these young men at least have role models. They want to become something. Even if it’s Ilm Dins and Mumtaz Qadris in pursuit of their Geert Wilders and Nupur Sharmas.