Pakistan woman in Arabic script dress saved from mob claiming blasphemy
Pakistan woman in Arabic script dress saved from mob claiming blasphemy
Hundreds mistakenly accused the woman of wearing a dress adorned with Quran verses.
An angry mob in Pakistan accused a woman who wore a dress adorned with Arabic calligraphy of blasphemy, after mistaking them for Quran verses.
She was saved by police who escorted her to safety after hundreds gathered. She later gave a public apology.
The dress has the word "Halwa" printed in Arabic letters on it, meaning beautiful in Arabic.
Blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan. Some people have been lynched even before their cases go on trial.
So this bunch of fuckwits who don't even know their own religious verses well enough to tell them apart from the word "beautiful" repeatedly written on a bit of clothing get dangerous at an innocent person, and she's the one apologising?
Yeah, that tracks.
There's a joke by a popular Pakistani comedian that goes like: "A Pakistani goes to Mecca for the first time. After getting off the plane, he sees a signboard with Arabic written on it, and starts kissing and prostrating himself in front of it. A few minutes later, an Arab dude taps him on the shoulder and says, 'bro, that sign says bathroom' "
This joke just played out in real life. Muslim extremists are beyond parody
Part of that is so to a language gap, most people in Pakistan speak/write in Urdu not Aramaic.
So they may understand the scripture when it's spoken to them via a translating imam, but probably wouldn't be able to read it.
It's pretty similar to how Christians would react to Latin prior to the reformation. They're only real exposure to it would have been during church so Latin = God stuff.
Pretty sure that no Christians, of any era, would lynch you for having "pulcha" on your clothing.
And linguists call Urdu and Hindi different registers of Hindustani. Essentially, it's Hindi with a lot of Persian and Arabic loanwords.
So it's even more specifically like British people seeing Latin before the reformation.
I am an atheist living in Pakistan, and incidents like these send a shiver down my spine. If this woman had not been sheltered by shopkeepers and the police had not acted quickly, she would definitely have been lynched and murdered.
The mob of zealots that had gathered around her was chanting "“Gustakh-e-Rasool ki ek hi saza, sar tan se juda, sar tan se juda”, which roughly translates to "what do blasphemers deserve? decapitation! decapitation!"
This country is fucked.
This is what happens when you turn a blind eye to the crimes of extremists. Countries everywhere must take note.
And then Europeans come and say we need more "democracy", how democracy could work in countries like that? You will always descent to things like Modi in India without educating ppl properly.
I disagree with that assessment. At least with respect to Pakistan, ideological capture by the right-wing was facilitated by anti-democratic forces. There is a very strong "Mullah-military connection". It was during the dictatorship of General Zia in the 1980s that Pakistan officially became an "Islamic Republic". He banned public dance/music performances, established Shariah courts, introduced anti-women rape laws and instituted the blasphemy law which is mentioned in the linked article. More recently, the army has been facilitating the rise of Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan through patronage, a right-wing reactionary party that primarily centers the defence of Islam and going after blasphemers. They also funded and armed several Islamist militant groups as proxies against India (not to mention the Afghan Taliban in the 80s with the help of the US).
Had Pakistan's democracy not been meddled with by the military, had we not gone through Zia's Islamization in the 80s, things would not be as fucked as they are today.
And from my vantage point as a Pakistani, the only reason things in India didn't get similarly bad until the recent rise of BJP is because India was founded as a secular democracy and had a functioning democratic system (at least relative to us). BJP is also a populist anti-democratic force, similar to MAGA in the US, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duterte in the Philippines, and Georgia Meloni and her alt-right peers in Europe. Religious populism is not unique to us developing nations, it is a rising threat around the world. However, I will agree that we are suffering the worst of it because lack of civil rights and weak civil institutions.
Just another day in a country that mixes politics with religion.
Nearly lynched for wearing a graphic tee? WTF is wrong with these people?