Since their establishment in 1986, blasphemy laws in Pakistan have posed a threat to Christians and other religious minorities. The law criminalizes blasphemy against the prophet Muhammad with punishments ranging from a fine to a death sentence. Blasphemy includes making derogatory remarks about the prophet, insulting the Quran, defiling places of worship, and any other act intending to defame Islam.

In January 2023, the Pakistan National Assembly expanded these laws to include punishments for blasphemy against religious figures connected to Muhammad, including his wives, friends or relatives. This adjustment caused an uptick in persecution rates across the country. Christians have accrued countless accusations, arrests, and blasphemy charges in the first half of 2023 alone. 

Most recently, Morning Star News reported that nearly a dozen Christian families fled their homes as a local man’s Facebook post of a Bible verse circulated in Muslim circles. 45-year-old Haroon Shahzad posted a verse from 1 Corinthians addressing pagan sacrifice on the first day of Eid al-Adha, an Islamic festival that “involves slaughtering an animal and sharing the meat.” 

Tahir Naveed Chaudhry, a Christian who lives near Shahzad’s village, stated that “the situation became tense after the Friday prayers when announcements were made from mosque loudspeakers asking people to gather for a protest.” Chaudhry and other Christian leaders quickly warned the village as a mob began to gather in a nearby city. Almost all 250 families fled and went into hiding, including Shahzad’s and Chaudhry’s. 

The police stopped the mob from harming anyone but detained Shahzad under “protective custody” once he returned. His attorney said she hopes that he will get permanent bail at his hearing in May 2024. 

Although the law outlines government-supervised death penalties, mobs such as these often get to those charged with blasphemy first, killing them extra-judicially. Al Jazeera reported in 2014 that at least 60 people had been killed “outside the Pakistani justice system in cases relating to blasphemy” by Islamic extremists. 

A missionary from Forgotten Missionaries International further explained this phenomenon of several people banding together to target one individual. 

“Pakistan has a culture of mob,” he reported. “There is a ‘mob-ism’ in Pakistan where a Muslim mob would come and they vandalize the entire village, kill people, burn that village, and this is very, very common.”

Since these groups often have weapons or other tactics of intimidation, they have the power to influence the outcome of judicial cases, if an accused Christian is given a fair trial at all. In 2015, the International Commission of Jurors reported that lawyers who represent the accused often face the “well-founded fear…of intimidation and attacks by complainants or other interested parties.” One such lawyer, Rashid Rehman, stated that “defending a blasphemy accused in Pakistan was like ‘walking into the jaws of death.’” 

Rehman was later killed for refusing to withdraw from a blasphemy case.