Local tourist killed in Pakistan’s Swat region over blasphemy allegations | Religion News

Islamabad, Pakistan – A 36-year-old man was killed and his body burned in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province after he was accused of desecrating the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

The incident occurred on Thursday evening in Madyan, a town in Swat district, a popular tourist destination 280 kilometers from the capital Islamabad.

Police officials in Swat reported that the man, whose identity was not disclosed, was a tourist from Sialkot, Punjab, who was accused of “insulting” the Quran. It is unclear what exactly the man did.

“Our police team reached the main market in Madyan to arrest the man and take him to the police station, but the crowd demanded his extradition,” a police official told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

Officials added that a large group of hundreds of people had gathered outside the Madyan police station where the man was being held by police. They attacked the premises and dragged the man out before killing him. How he was killed is unclear, although a police source at Swat’s central police headquarters, about an hour from Madyan, told Al Jazeera by phone that the man had been “tortured to death.” Videos circulating on social media show a large crowd chanting religious slogans and surrounding a burning body.

A senior Swat police officer, Zahid Ullah Khan, told the media that the group also set fire to the police station and a police vehicle, adding that investigations into the incident were underway.

However, police have not confirmed whether a First Information Report (FIR) has been filed in the incident or whether any arrests have been made.

Officials at the Civil Hospital in Madyan confirmed to Al Jazeera that at least eight people were admitted overnight with minor injuries from the incident and all had been treated and discharged.

While traffic in Madyan’s main market area temporarily came to a standstill overnight, local officials said the situation in the city had returned to normal and shops and tourist traffic were back open as usual.

The Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Ali Amin Gandapur, also condemned the death of the tourist and called on the police to immediately publish a report on the incident.

According to a statement from the Chief Minister’s Office, Gandapur directed the provincial police chief to take emergency measures to bring the situation under control.

Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are based on the legal system of the British colonial rulers, who introduced religious laws in 1860 to stop violence between Hindus and Muslims on the Indian subcontinent.

These laws remained unchanged after the founding of the state of Pakistan in August 1947, but were first changed in 1974, when a constitutional amendment declared the Ahmadiyya sect, a 500,000-member religious minority that considers itself Muslim, to be “non-Muslim.”

During the rule of military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq from 1977 to 1988, the laws were further tightened and new criminal offenses were introduced, including desecration of the Koran, insulting Islamic prophets or using “derogatory” expressions against certain religious figures.

Blasphemy remains one of the most sensitive issues in Pakistan, where even the slightest accusation can lead to widespread violence.

Since 1987, more than 2,000 people have been accused of blasphemy and at least 88 people have been killed on such charges, according to the Centre for Social Justice, an independent Lahore-based organization that advocates for minority rights and collects data on blasphemy cases in Pakistan.

Last month, in Sargodha, Punjab, a 70-year-old Christian was attacked and seriously injured by a group of people who accused him of desecrating the Quran. The group then started a riot, setting fire to shops and damaging homes of other Christian families in the area.

The police managed to control the violence and rescue the accused, but he succumbed to his injuries nine days later.

In another incident in February last year, an angry group attacked a police station in Nankana Sahib in Punjab and killed a man accused of blasphemy after forcibly removing him from police custody.

In August 2023, Christian communities in the Punjab town of Jaranwala were victims of numerous attacks on their homes and churches after two brothers accused them of desecrating the Quran. More than 22 churches were burned down and nearly 100 houses were damaged.

Arafat Mazhar, a Lahore-based scholar who studies Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, said the issue raised serious security and civil rights concerns. “There is nothing more horrific than violence related to blasphemy.”

“In the 1980s, the Pakistani state promised that anyone who implied or insinuated blasphemy, whether malicious or not, would be killed,” Mazhar told Al Jazeera. “This led to a flood of blasphemy allegations and when people saw that the state was not keeping its promise, however absurd it might be, they took the law into their own hands.”

Mazhar stressed that while there is increasing intolerance in society due to the “expansion of right-wing extremist hate groups”, the fundamental problem lies in the laws that criminalise blasphemy.

“The state must rethink the promise it made decades ago. It must confront the flood of blasphemy accusations, radically change the law and prevent its misuse against people.”