The legal profession this week lost one of our best and bravest. Pretending to be potential clients in a matrimonial case, two people entered the law firm of Rashid Rehman Khan and shot him to death. Rashid Rehman, a coordinator for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), had faced death threats for years after he courageously represented a university professor accused of blasphemy. Unable to kill the accused, Islamic extremists appear to have now killed the lawyer. Rehman never flinched in his commitment to the rule of law and to this country.
Pakistan’s continued prosecution of people for expressing their views of faith remains one of the great outrages of our generation. Pakistan is one of our allies that has worked with the Obama Administration to create a new international blasphemy standard. The continued crackdown of anti-religious speech is part of its long-standing blasphemy abuses. For many years, I have been writing about the threat of an international blasphemy standard and the continuing rollback on free speech in the West. For recent columns, click here and here and here.
We have been following the rise of anti-blasphemy laws around the world, including the increase in prosecutions in the West and the support of the Obama Administration for the prosecution of some anti-religious speech under the controversial Brandenburg standard.
The case involving Rehman is typical and disgraceful. Junaid Hafeez, a lecturer at Multan’s Bahauddin Zakariya University was accused of defaming the prophet Mohammed on social media last year. No one would represent the professor until Rehman stepped forward. He was greeted at court with threats against his life. Three lawyers representing the complainant confronted him and reportedly one told him “You will not come to court next time because you will not exist anymore.” Notably, these threats were reportedly made in front of a judge who took no action against those making the threats — an outrageous violation of every principle under the rule of law.
Pakistan (one of our largest recipients of aid) continues to jail people who simply express their faith or views on religion.
There are at least 16 people in Pakistan are on death row for blasphemy and in 2012 the Center for Research and Security Studies found that more than 50 people accused of blasphemy have been lynched since 1990.
This brave lawyer is now dead and the judge who took no action on the threats continues to sit on cases and those lawyers who allegedly threatened him continue to practice law. Putting aside our earlier work on an international blasphemy standard, the question is why we continue to send billions to countries that aggressively fight the core civil liberties that defines not just this country but the rule of law. The death of this extraordinary man is a disgrace not just to Pakistan but those who dismiss blasphemy prosecutions as simply some local or domestic concern. It is not just the denial of due process but the denial of free speech and free exercise — rights that should be guaranteed to all as a basic matter of human rights.
Source: ABA Journal
Buying them back would only encourage the kidnapping of more girls for profit.
This same argument is often made about buying the slaves to stop slavery. It wouldn’t have worked for precisely the same reason.
Those African school girls were abducted in the name of religion, weren’t they? BTW, if the victims are to be sold into slavery, why don’t Buffet and Gates, et. al., just buy them? They can afford it. Wouldn’t that solve the problem? Just buy them back.
“Hillary Clinton, no doubt under [Obama’s] orders, REFUSED to put the Boko Haram terrorists in Nigeria, who recently kidnapped 260 girls, on the terrorist list”
This is the latest political football from the side that used to say politics ended at the water’s edge.
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/05/08/3435588/hillary-and-boko-haram/
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People interested in facts should go read the whole thing.
Nick: ““Obama refuses to strongly denounce these blaspheme laws. Maybe because he envies them?”
The truth:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/09/26/president-obama-to-united-nations-we-do-not-ban-blasphemy/
Obama:
“I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video. The answer is enshrined in our laws: our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech. Here in the United States, countless publications provoke offense. Like me, the majority of Americans are Christian, and yet we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs.”
“Moreover, as President of our country, and Commander-in-Chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so. Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views — even views that we disagree with.”
“We do so not because we support hateful speech, but because our Founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views, and practice their own faith, may be threatened. We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can become a tool to silence critics, or oppress minorities. We do so because given the power of faith in our lives, and the passion that religious differences can inflame, the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech — the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect.”
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As Ezra Klein says, no one listens to the President. But it’s much worse when you say that he has done the opposite of what he has done. And it’s quite another to insinuate that the president envies the very thing he denounced.
Karen S:
“Islamic extremists feel called to murder anyone who offends them.”
So do Christian Extremists, Jewish extremists, Hindu extremists…
“We need to vote with our dollars on human rights, and stop supporting countries who hate us and do not allow freedom of religion.”
Do you buy gasoline? Do you know how much of that comes from Saudi Arabia?
Nick: “misguided philosophy of “reaching out” to these crazy countries”
Countries are not one person. There are good people and bad people, and we should reach out to the good people whenever we can.
“we have not appeased them but emboldened them”
We embolden them by appeasing them.
“Obama refuses to strongly denounce these blaspheme laws. Maybe because he envies them?”
Slander.
“Hillary Clinton, no doubt under Clinton’s orders, REFUSED to put the Boko Haram terrorists in Nigeria, who recently kidnapped 260 girls, on the terrorist list.”
Proof? Source?
“Under “Obama’” orders”
No doubt? I have doubt. Perhaps you have some source to verify your assertion?
Reblogged this on Citizens, not serfs.
Surely it is blasphemous for any human being – not a Divine Authority – to claim to know the mind of God? Can anyone who truly respects Divine Authority speak about religious matters except with the greatest caution and humility? Brash arrogance is not the signature of a True Believer. How will God treat those who speak as if they equalled Him in rank?
Under “Obama'” orders. My bad.
Justice, You are correct. However, in an incredibly misguided philosophy of “reaching out” to these crazy countries, we have not appeased them but emboldened them. Obama refuses to strongly denounce these blaspheme laws. Maybe because he envies them? Hillary Clinton, no doubt under Clinton’s orders, REFUSED to put the Boko Haram terrorists in Nigeria, who recently kidnapped 260 girls, on the terrorist list. Congress and nonpartisan experts pleaded w/ them for 2 years to do so. Kerry finally did this but just a few months ago.
The US needs to disengage from these countries and the President must repudiate blasphemy laws and the international blasphemy standard now being worked on at the UN. We cannot allow religious fanatics to tell us what we can and cannot say, criticize or make fun of. The Presient must stand up for free speech and must tell the Islamic countries who are pushing hard for this international blashemeny standard and extra jurisdictional enforcement of their blasphemny laws that he and the US will not permit it. For too long we have been complacent about this in the name of “tolerance”. It has only fueled the fire and make the fundamentalists even more brazen,
Islamic extremists feel called to murder anyone who offends them. It’s true that women fare worst under Sharia law, and yet it is expanding into more countries, not less.
We need to vote with our dollars on human rights, and stop supporting countries who hate us and do not allow freedom of religion.
That is certainly annoying… content filter hungry again… munch… munch-munch…
We have people in this country who hate lawyers for what the law imposes on them.
If they did not present a defense in the best manner they know how to, they would be violating the law of agency, seeing how they are fiduciaries.
A recent Obama appointee was one such victim.
Ignorance is the driving factor:
(Washington Post, quoting 3 political scientists). The same thing applies on blogs.
I feel most sorry for the women and children in those societies. Men like this attorney who spoke out and defended an accused blasphemer are incredibly brave, but I fear that countries lke Pakistan and the rest of the Stan’s and Arab countries who have a state religions are doomed to more of the same unless they break away from fundamentalist beliefs. My opinion only.
I don’t support your fundamentalist conclusion, but I will agree that there are a large percentage of extremists there. If people choose to hate, they will leverage any morsel of any argument to enable their hate. Religion is easy, especially once you’ve justified to yourself you have satisfied all the requirements to act properly on behalf of said religion. Humans have an incredible knack for taking what should be the best of things, and making them the worst of things. Maybe that’s Pakistan in a nutshell. I have a great family friend who is from Pakistan, and you have to feel for him knowing what continues to go on there.
Fundamentalists are extremists. Bad things happen when they run a country because they feel they have a divine imperative to tell you how you must live your life. In this case they are Muslim. My tutorial. Thank you.
Dredd excellent info once again. I’ll be checking back to that page many times in future.
Pakistan seems to be a simmering cauldron of insanity. With nuclear weapons. I bet the NED can’t even get an ideological foothold there (which is pretty bad considering the company and their atrocious conduct they keep in Ukraine…). Forget the blasphemy standard, forget the aid, how about a plan to secure those nukes when the same shooters get a hold of the trigger for those things. They might show up anywhere…
The dynamics of fundamentalism have one thing in common in all cultures, violence.
Religious fundamentalism leads to racism:
(Symbolic Racism: A Look At The Science – 3, quoting Mark J. Brandt, Christine Reyna, To Love or Hate Thy Neighbor: The Role of Authoritarianism and Traditionalism in Explaining the Link Between Fundamentalism and Racial Prejudice, Political Psychology, 2014, 35, 2). Down in the cultural amygdala is where there is a lot of static, but even further deep down in the amygdala, things get violent because people think they are better than the ones they have it out for.
The US has gotten complacent as a nation and culture. Why are there not more attorneys speaking up about the abuses of our government. They would face no physical or even criminal danger. The problem is they face public scorn as our host has experienced, but continues to speak truth. Our complacency has made simple scorn by our friends, associates, etc. a reason to be silent. Colombia was ruled by narco terrorists in the 80’s/90’s. It took courageous attorneys, judges, police and journalists to retake their country and restore it to a solid democracy where people no longer live in fear. We are soft, and it is never more apparent than when stories like this brave man are told.