Blasphemy Laws : No point scoring but a legal and academic debate to resolve the issue

Recent heated debate over Blasphemy laws is getting worse day by day and now the issue has gone to the level of insanity and now people are using it to score political points.

The issue got worse when instead of taking the issue in parliament or Islamic ideological council , the issue is politicized for point scoring left/right politics or liberal/mullah politics. Now its high time for religious scholars, law experts and human rights experts to sit together and resolve the issue by doing a constructive legal and academic debate. We have a very basic principle in Quran :

“O ye who believe! Be steadfast witnesses for Allah in equity, and let not hatred of any people seduce you that ye deal not justly. Deal justly, that is nearer to your duty. Observe your duty to Allah. Lo! Allah is Informed of what ye do.” [Al-maeda ,8]

The biggest blasphemy that can be done is to introduce things in the name of Allah and Prophet (S.A.W) which are not part of their teachings.

We need to improve Qazaf laws for false witness, law of witness itself, importance of personal testimony, procedure of implementation and also we need to see whether this law can be implemented on minorities or not. According to fiqh Hanafi the dominating fiqh , the law cannot be implemented on Zimmi or non muslims under the responsibility of an Islamic State. Even for majority muslim population we need to see what punishment is there according to Quran and Sunnah or social circumstances of the alleged person should be considered during the case like the punishment for Zina or adultery committed by muslim with backward or uneducated social background is half as compared to other muslims and also we need to see if apology in such cases can work. Current procedure is a legacy of colonial era where there is no consideration of alleged person’s s social background is given or law is applied in a real centralized manner.

We also need to see what is meant by Blasphemy? I have seen muslims being persecuted for this law just because of them having a different point of view on 12 Rabiulawwal and Waseela issue.

We neither want a Pastor Terry Jones type situation which can start a civil war in the country nor we should make it a holocaust issue on which even debate is not allowed in many countries including those who call themselves civilized.

The problem is that we are in a war mode and stuck in an unwanted war which has destroyed or social fabric and everyone is in hyper state to protect their ways and level of sanity has gone down. The policy of using sectarianism as a tool by establishment and foreign masters for expanding war has also contributed in this.

If we claim to be muslims and call our state an Islamic state then basic principles of justice and equality which were part of the first Islamic state of Madina and also part of Meesaq e Madina should be kept in mind.