New Delhi: Pakistani-born Australian author and self-proclaimed atheist Harris Sultan has an answer to reports of rising Islamophobia in Pakistan. “Stop forcing Islam down the throats of your children,” he said in a long Twitter post.
“Stop forcing your children to pray, and fast, and keep them from speaking against your archaic, religious customs,” he said. Sultan, who considers Richard Dawkins as one of his heroes, took to social media to air his views on religion and rising Islamophobia after actor Faysal Qureshi called for the arrest of blasphemers on a TV show he hosts. Some of the panelists on the show included religious leaders.
In his tweet, he warned that ‘the rise of apostates’ in Pakistan was due to the ‘brutality and suppression of dissent’ in Pakistan.
The show was aired on Pakistan’s Bol TV on 9 April. In a video clip, which has since gone viral, one of the guests said that according to the Federal Investigative Agency (FIA) in Pakistan, 400,000 Pakistanis have been charged with blasphemy this year. He goes on to say 120 were found guilty, while expressing dissatisfaction. “Where do we go for justice,” he said.
The religious leaders and Quraishi discussed the dangers of the internet for youngsters.
The video garnered strong reactions from celebrities and authors alike. From filmmaker Jami Azad to Mahira Khan and Osman Khalid Butt, all condemned the remarks. Butt took to Twitter to write, ‘Hate is profitable’.
Harris Sultan’s comments also sparked a debate. In 2018, he published his book The Curse of God: Why I Left Islam tracking his journey to atheism. Reacting to the FIA report cited by the religious head, he added that “400,000 Pakistanis from all walks of life, who regularly engage in bashing Islam…will turn into 4 million very soon.”
“If you don’t want this to blow out of proportion then stop killing us,” he wrote.
He then cited a 2022 report which categorises Pakistan as the 7th most Islamophobic country in the world.
Pakistan’s take on blasphemy
Pakistan has one of the strictest blasphemy laws anywhere in the world, after Iran. On 17 January 2023, the National Assembly of Pakistan voted overwhelmingly to strengthen the country’s blasphemy laws, which in their current form include the death sentence for insulting the Prophet Muhammad. The new legislation mandates ten years in prison or life imprisonment for anyone found guilty of insulting the companions of the Prophet, who number in the hundreds among the first Muslims.
The amendments in the law led to many human rights activists pointing out the impact of this on Shiite Muslims, who were critical of many early Muslim leaders, who could be singled out by the new regulations.
On 8 April, author Harris Sultan had also tweeted about a legal notification by the Lahore Bar Association stating that they had identified ‘400,000 blasphemers within Pakistan’s borders who have allegedly shared blasphemous texts/memes on social media.’
Meanwhile, Faysal Qureshi took to Twitter to issue a statement regarding his comments on the show. In a tweet, he wrote about “how much of appreciation” the show got. “…Some people are now portraying it wrong, they are portraying as if we were talking about blasphemy and we were not talking about that, it was something else, it about disrespecting Quran, we are Muslims and we can bear the torture to an extent, we can’t bear beyond a certain level”.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)