LAHORE: Khadim Hussein Rizvi, a radical Pakistani religious scholar who this week led thousands of supporters to a sit-in in Islamabad over the reissue in France of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, which they consider blasphemous, died Thursday. He was 54 years old.
According to the clergyman’s spokesman and a doctor at the hospital that Rizvi was taken to in the eastern city of Lahore, he was showing symptoms similar to Covid-19, but had not been tested for the coronavirus.
The doctor, Salman Ahmed, said Rizvi had had a high fever for four days and developed severe respiratory problems on Thursday. He was then taken to the hospital where he died.
The protest by Rizvi’s party, the Tehreek-e-Labiak, began on Sunday outside the capital Islamabad, where protesters and Pakistani security forces briefly clashed, prompting police to fire tear gas at the protesters throwing stones. The rally was one of a series that took place across the country to express outrage at the cartoons.
After the violence in Islamabad died down, protesters staged a sit-in that ended early Tuesday after Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government promised that its demands to cut diplomatic ties with France and expel the French ambassador would be discussed in Parliament in three months.
The sit-in drew thousands of men who sat for two days, huddled together and few wearing face masks. Tehreek-e-Labiak spokesman Shafiq Amini said the government also agreed to release all arrested party members.
The radical Islamist party rose to prominence in Pakistan’s 2018 federal elections, campaigning with a single-point agenda: upholding the country’s controversial blasphemy law that requires the death penalty for anyone who insults Islam. The party won just two provincial seats in the southern province of Sindh, although Rizvi’s rallies generally drew tens of thousands.
In conservative Pakistan, the mere accusation of blasphemy can incite crowds to unrest. Rizvi also led protests last year, when the Khan government released Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman detained on death row for eight years accused of committing blasphemy. A court acquitted her, but she had to flee to Canada after receiving death threats.
Cartoons of the prophet have sparked protests in Asia and the Middle East, with calls for a boycott of French products. They were also seen as the trigger for several deadly attacks against French citizens and interests in recent weeks.
Tehreek-e-Labiak has a history of organizing protests and sit-ins to lobby for their demands. In November 2017, his followers organized a protest and a 21-day sit-in after a reference to the holiness of the Prophet Muhammad was removed from the text of a government form.
Khan tweeted his condolences for Rizvi’s death, while the Minister of Religious Affairs, Peer Noor ul Haq Qadi, called the cleric “ a great Islamic scholar and lover of the Prophet. ”
Rizvi’s funeral is expected to draw tens of thousands of people at a time when coronavirus cases in Pakistan have risen steadily. Pakistan has reported more than 365,900 cases of the virus and 7,248 deaths.
According to the clergyman’s spokesman and a doctor at the hospital that Rizvi was taken to in the eastern city of Lahore, he was showing symptoms similar to Covid-19, but had not been tested for the coronavirus.
The doctor, Salman Ahmed, said Rizvi had had a high fever for four days and developed severe respiratory problems on Thursday. He was then taken to the hospital where he died.
The protest by Rizvi’s party, the Tehreek-e-Labiak, began on Sunday outside the capital Islamabad, where protesters and Pakistani security forces briefly clashed, prompting police to fire tear gas at the protesters throwing stones. The rally was one of a series that took place across the country to express outrage at the cartoons.
After the violence in Islamabad died down, protesters staged a sit-in that ended early Tuesday after Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government promised that its demands to cut diplomatic ties with France and expel the French ambassador would be discussed in Parliament in three months.
The sit-in drew thousands of men who sat for two days, huddled together and few wearing face masks. Tehreek-e-Labiak spokesman Shafiq Amini said the government also agreed to release all arrested party members.
The radical Islamist party rose to prominence in Pakistan’s 2018 federal elections, campaigning with a single-point agenda: upholding the country’s controversial blasphemy law that requires the death penalty for anyone who insults Islam. The party won just two provincial seats in the southern province of Sindh, although Rizvi’s rallies generally drew tens of thousands.
In conservative Pakistan, the mere accusation of blasphemy can incite crowds to unrest. Rizvi also led protests last year, when the Khan government released Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman detained on death row for eight years accused of committing blasphemy. A court acquitted her, but she had to flee to Canada after receiving death threats.
Cartoons of the prophet have sparked protests in Asia and the Middle East, with calls for a boycott of French products. They were also seen as the trigger for several deadly attacks against French citizens and interests in recent weeks.
Tehreek-e-Labiak has a history of organizing protests and sit-ins to lobby for their demands. In November 2017, his followers organized a protest and a 21-day sit-in after a reference to the holiness of the Prophet Muhammad was removed from the text of a government form.
Khan tweeted his condolences for Rizvi’s death, while the Minister of Religious Affairs, Peer Noor ul Haq Qadi, called the cleric “ a great Islamic scholar and lover of the Prophet. ”
Rizvi’s funeral is expected to draw tens of thousands of people at a time when coronavirus cases in Pakistan have risen steadily. Pakistan has reported more than 365,900 cases of the virus and 7,248 deaths.
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