Cabbages & Kings: Blasphemy & the licence to kill

“He said that truth is beauty
And the other way round.
But reading his verse
constantly
I have naggingly found
That one from the earthly
trinity
Is surely and sadly missing
Though Keats, like most of humanity
Wasn’t averse to kissing,

Yes truth fits beauty
A hand in a glove
But isn’t there a third?
The Wing of a Dove?”
From Khali Pilli Bom
by Bachchoo

On Tuesday last in a Glasgow court, Tanveer Ahmed was convicted to a “life sentence” of 27 years for the murder of one Asad Shah in April this year. Tanveer Ahmed is a taxi driver who lives in Bradford, two to three hundred miles away from Glasgow. He travelled to Glasgow searching for Shah who ran a grocery and general store, confronted him and stabbed him to death. Ahmed was unrepentant when arrested and at his trial. He said he had punished a blasphemer in the name of Islam. He didn’t know his victim but had picked up some Facebook and other Internet tosh which Asad Shah had posted and said he was incensed by the postings and motivated to punish what he regarded as the sin of blasphemy. Asad Shah, the alleged blasphemer, was from the Ahmadia sect of Islam and over the last Christmas had posted Facebook entries greeting all his Christian friends and clients. Shah also posted a curious entry saying he had had a dream that he was a prophet.

At the trial both, his greeting to his Christian friends at Christmas and the brief description of his dream, were quoted as evidence of blasphemy and the provocation to murder. Shah was a very popular figure in the community and literally hundreds of people, Muslims, Christians and others turned out at his funeral and demonstrated against the murderer outside and in the court where the trial was taking place. Shah’s family stayed away from the court for fear of reprisals from the murderer’s handful of supporters, who proclaimed to the press and to TV cameras that they supported Ahmed in stabbing Shah. These people even chanted Islamist slogans in court.

As the case progressed Ahmed’s supporters in Brad-ford were interviewed on TV and said that Ahmed was an admirer of a Pakistani murderer called Mumtaz Qadri who was hanged for the 2011 shooting of Salman Taseer the governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province. Taseer, father of my friend Aatish and schoolmate of another friend Tariq Ali (in the chummy world of power in Pakistan!) had supported a Christian woman who was accused by her neighbours of blasphemy. Taseer publicly asserted that Pakistan’s blasphemy laws were used to persecute minorities for random reasons. Qadri, who was a policeman on security duty to protect Taseer, murdered him instead .

Throughout history there are instances of this alleged crime of “blasphemy” being used as a weapon in a battle for political allegiance and factional struggle for power. In the 15th century, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for blasphemy, the Bishop of Beauvais having declared her a heretic. The stated motive for her execution was her heretical claim to have spoken with saints who passed on to her messages from God. This may have gone against the beliefs and conscience of the good Bishop, but her execution was a political act by the English enemies of Charles VII of France whom she supported.

So also, during the late Tudor tussle between the Catholics and the Protestant followers of Henry VIII (“Jihadi Henry” the wife-beheader) when both sides, having gained power, executed the theological leaders of the opposition, such as Thomas More, to prevent them gaining a threatening following. In the late 15th century in Italy, Savonarola was burnt at the stake by the soldiers of the Medici and the then Pope Alexander for blasphemy and heresy following a long political struggle between his followers and theirs. In all the monotheistic religions, this concept of blasphemy and heresy, the insult to prophets and God, and the contradiction of eschatological beliefs, is used as the motive for executions.

In the Sassanian period of Zoroastrianism in Iran, two significant heresies arose, gathered a following, challenged the power of the ruling priestly class and threatened to develop into revolutions. The perpetrators of these heresies, Mani and Mazdak, both of them claiming to be priests, were executed for heresy. Blasphemy is the verbal avatar of heresy. In the Western world, the laws of blasphemy have been abolished or relaxed. No one will be burnt at the stake, lashed or jailed for any statement against a prophet or any belief that the Pope or the Archbishops may consider contrary to biblical orthodoxy. The blasphemy laws came into direct conflict with the ideals of freedom of thought and freedom of speech and the latter won.

I have no doubt that the murderers Ahmed and Mumtaz Qadri, whom he admired, were acting out of some deep disturbance of their religious conscience. And yet this conscience and their subsequent violent acts are consistent with supporting a now-global orthodoxy against a manifestation of contemporary liberal belief. In the case of Qadri, his assassination of Taseer is one bloody episode in the war for the soul of Pakistan; the war in which the first shot on the other side was fired by Muhammad Ali Jinnah when he declared “you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed…” In the case of Ahmed, since the British state has no interest in prosecuting Shah or anyone else for statements on Facebook, he decided to take what he thinks of “the law” into his own hands. One can say he acted out of conscience but I would rather say he acted as a perpetrator of a globalised faction which feels God has licenced them to kill those who don’t share their medieval convictions.