The United States on Thursday urged Pakistan to review the country’s harsh blasphemy laws the day after a US citizen accused of raping them was shot dead in a courtroom.
The blatant murder has highlighted Pakistan’s much-maligned blasphemy laws, which critics say are often used to persecute and intimidate members of religious minorities.
The American, Tahir Ahmad Naseem, 57, was being tried in the city of Peshawar, in northwest Pakistan, accused of claiming to be a prophet. Mr. Naseem was shot six times on Wednesday by a young man who authorities identified only as Faisal, 19, a local resident.
The murder, in a courtroom at the Peshawar Judicial Complex, attracted strong condemnation from the United States government.
“We express our condolences to the family of Tahir Naseem, the American citizen who was killed today inside a courtroom in Pakistan,” the State Department’s Office of South and Central Asian Affairs said Thursday. “We urge Pakistan to take immediate action and seek reforms to prevent such an embarrassing tragedy from happening again.”
Naseem was charged with blasphemy in 2018 on charges that carried penalties ranging from fines to death.
He had been a member of the Ahmadi sect, which has been declared heretical under the Pakistani Constitution and whose members face repeated persecution. However, the representatives said that Mr. Naseem had left the sect and had claimed to be the messiah and a prophet.
Blasphemy is a highly combustible and sensitive subject in Pakistan, with emotions burning at the mere rumors that Islam has been insulted. The government has never executed anyone under blasphemy laws, but people accused of it are often killed by crowds even before police can take action, human rights groups say.
Shortly after Mr. Naseem’s murder, a video of the gunman was widely shared on social media. He was shown sitting on a court bench while detained by police officers, and is heard saying that Prophet Muhammad in a dream told him to kill Mr. Naseem.
“He is an enemy of Islam,” the gunman is heard to say of Mr. Naseem. “He is an enemy of Pakistan.”
Police officers said they were investigating how the attacker managed to bring a weapon into the high-security court complex.
Rights activists and rights groups have long campaigned against blasphemy laws, saying they are used to oppress religious minorities and resolve personal disputes.
But hard-line Islamic religious parties have bitterly opposed measures to amend the laws. Leading political leaders acknowledge the misuse of blasphemy laws, but they have mostly yielded to pressure from religious parties not to change them and have resisted taking a public position against them.
In 2011 Salmaan Taseer, a prominent politician who was then governor of the Punjab province, had campaigned to change blasphemy laws, but his police guard fatally shot him.
Mr. Taseer had been campaigning for the release of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman who was sentenced to death and imprisoned for eight years after being accused of blasphemy. The Supreme Court reversed her sentence in 2018, and she now lives in Canada.
Mr. Taseer’s murder was a chilling reminder of the dangers faced by secular politicians in a deeply conservative and religious Pakistani society.
