Pakistan’s blasphemy law imposed the death penalty on those who insult Muhammad or the Koran. However, no charges are being considered against the people who used the loudspeakers of the local mosques to send the mob into the police station to brutally murder the man. Thousands responded, burning police cars and wounding officers before breaking into the station. Even the police chief’s home was attacked.
I am not sure why (since this took hours) additional help from the military or other police units could not be acquired.
I have written extensively on the rise of blasphemy or hate speech prosecutions against religious critics in the West. The Obama Administration has been working with Pakistan and other Muslim nations to develop an international standard for blasphemy prosecutions. The West has steadily yielded to the demands of religious groups that free speech must be curtailed in the name of faith. At the same time, West governmental and religious leaders have denounced agnostics and atheists as one of the greatest threats facing the West (here and here and here and here). President Obama and Hillary Clinton have been facilitating this trend by working with Muslim nations to develop an international standard allowing for the prosecution of those who insult religion. The Administration has drawn a dangerous line with Muslim countries in first supporting the concept of an international blasphemy standard. As I have mentioned before, the efforts of the Obama Administration to work with these countries on an international blasphemy standard is a threat to free speech around the world. After first supporting an international blasphemy standard, the Administration sought to get Pakistan and other countries to adopt the Brandenburg standard as the basis for such prosecutions. This case also shows why the use of the Brandenburg standard is so dangerous in the hands of such officials who view free speech as the cause of imminent violence. Because any joke or image of the Prophet can trigger violence, the standard is immediately satisfied in countries like Egypt, which can then claim some legal legitimacy under the standard created with the United States.
Of course, it remains a mystery how such deeply religious people would believe that God wants them to beat a mentally ill man to death and burn his body — after attacking police officers and destroying property. Such horrific scenes will continue absent prosecutions of the ring leaders. The failure to bring such charges would add an element of complicity to this unspeakable crime.
Source: Brisbane Times as first seen on Reddit