Police in Pakistan have arrested the leader of a radical Islamist political party a day after he threatened the government with protests if it did not expel France’s ambassador over depictions of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed.

Saad Rizvi was arrested in the eastern city of Lahore to “maintain law and order”, said Ghulam Mohammad Dogar, chief of Lahore police.

Rizvi called on the government to honour what he said was a commitment it made in February to his party to expel the French envoy before April 20 over the publication in France of depictions of Islam’s Prophet.

The government has said that it only committed to discuss the matter in parliament.

Mr Dogar provided no further details about the arrest, which quickly drew condemnation from Rizvi’s supporters who began gathering near the party’s main office for a protest.

Clashes soon erupted in Lahore between police and Rizvi’s supporters, who were also rallying on the outskirts of the capital Islamabad, disrupting traffic and inconveniencing residents.

Protesters also blocked some roads in the southern port city of Karachi and elsewhere in the country, raising fears of violence amid a surge in cases of coronavirus in Pakistan.

Rizvi emerged as the leader of the Tehreek-e-Labai

k Pakistan party in November after the sudden death of his father, Khadim Hussein Rizvi.

His supporters have previously held violent rallies in Pakistan to pressure the government not to repeal the country’s controversial blasphemy laws.

The party wants the government to boycott French products and expel the French ambassador under an agreement signed by the government with Rizvi’s party in February.

Tehreek-e-Labiak and other Islamist parties have denounced French President Emmanuel Macron since October last year, saying he tried to defend caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed as freedom of expression.

Mr Macron’s comments came after a young Muslim beheaded a French school teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in class.

The images had been republished by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to mark the opening of the trial over the deadly 2015 attack against the publication for the original caricatures.

That enraged many Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere who believed those depictions were blasphemous.

Rizvi’s party gained prominence in Pakistan’s 2018 federal elections, campaigning on a single issue: defending the country’s controversial blasphemy law, which calls for the death penalty for anyone who insults Islam.

It also has a history of staging protests and sit-ins to pressure the government to accept its demands.

In November 2017, Rizvi’s followers staged a 21-day protest and sit-in after a reference to the sanctity of the Prophet Mohammed was removed from the text of a government form.

Interfaith group – FACES – which is a Pakistan based interfaith group brought a group of Islamic clerics to meetings with key politicians, ministers, hate crime practitioners and interfaith organisations in the U.K.

The Founder and former Director of Faith Matters, Fiyaz Mughal, met with the group and explained how sectarian hatred from Pakistan was being promoted through satellite channels and beamed into the homes of Urdu speaking British citizens; through such channels anti-Ahmadi rhetoric and anti-Shia hatred was being promoted, he said.

Furthermore, Mughal commented on how such hatred was influencing and re-enforcing such intolerance against minorities in Islam and that the murder of Asad Shah in Glasgow and the incendiary rhetoric of Islamist extremists such as Khadim Hussain Rizvi, posed a threat to the security of British nationals.

Having spent 45 minutes on this topic, we were then appalled to see those very Islamic clerics, promoting anti-Muslim bigotry against a U.K. Minister – Lord Tariq Ahmad. To add insult to injury, they made a short video which they posted up, suggesting that Ahmadis are ‘non-believers’ and that they were not aware of the background of this U.K. Minister.

Irrespective of what religion a U.K. Minister follows, we cannot stand idly by and have a member of our Government abused because of their Islamic identity which does not fit the ‘pigeon-holed’ belief patterns of such preachers. In fact, we would argue that such preachers are not fit for purpose and do not have the backbone to challenge bigotry.

We have asked the Foreign and Commonwealth Office whether this trip was funded by the British taxpayer. The answer we have received was a categoric ‘no’. In future, we would ask civil servants to vet any group and individuals travelling from overseas who seek to meet with ministers in the United Kingdom. It makes a mockery of human rights and ‘tolerance’ when such clerics seek to abuse our ministers because they are, in their torrid minds, the ‘wrong type of Muslim’.

Here is the video of the clerics. They include Sunni and Shia clerics.

یہ مولوی مذہبی رواداری پر پاکستان کا روشن چہرہ دکھانے گئے باہر گئے اور ان کی ایک قادیانی لارڈ طارق احمد کیساتھ تصویر وائرل ہوگئی اور پھر روشن چہرے کی روشنی اس وضاحتی بیان سےاندھیرے میں بدل گئی کہ قادیانیوں کیلئے نرم گوشہ رکھنے والا اسلام سے خارج ہے
pic.twitter.com/yKExrYetBx

— Rumi (@R00mi1) March 12, 2020

On the 30th of November 2018, Deeni News, broadcast this interview with a number of religious leaders based in the United Kingdom. What is so distressing about this interview is that these UK based individuals are demanding the release of violent extremism promoter, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, who leads the extremist Tehreek-e-Labaik party in Pakistan. This is not so much a political party, as a group of religious zealots who use force and intimidation against people they regard as ‘blasphemers’.

One of the speakers says the following which is chilling:

“The decision around Asia Masih (Christian), has not only been rejected by the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP), but all the religious circles in Pakistan and the entire Muslim Ummah has rejected it”.

“Secondly, we strongly condemn the torture and arrest of the leaders of TLP and all other religious leaders. We would like to clarify this to the Government of Pakistan that such acts are disgracing the country and would be damaging for the safety and security of the country.”

What the religious leaders fail to even consider is that the safety of the country has been damaged on numerous occasions by Khadim Hussain Rizvi and the TLP. Their ‘sit-ins‘ have been intimidating, led to the deaths of people and targeted minorities in Pakistan.

They go onto add:

“The issues surrounding Namoos -e-Risalaat, (the honour of the Prophet Muhammad), is not just a problem of one sect or group but a problem of the entire Ummah. Also, because it is a religious issue so it has to be resolved in the Shariah courts.”

So, just to summarise the nature of the public conversation. UK based religious leaders have asked for the release of a violence promoting extremist, said that his incarceration is a threat to the security of Pakistan and that the ‘honour’ of the Prophet Muhammad is something that is of global and worldwide concern. They then bring in the need for ‘Shariah’ courts to determine such matters. No doubt, any Shariah court would gleefully let of this extremist.

We have today, signed a letter with numerous organisations and individuals, asking the Home Secretary to provide the option of sanctuary and refuge to Asia Bibi, who was released after 8 years of false imprisonment in Pakistan.

Faith Matters has consistently highlighted the extremism of groups like Tehreek-e-Labaik and its leader, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, who has inflamed tensions in Pakistan by rousing extremist mobs to attack the Government. Faith Matters also managed to work with Twitter to close down all of Rizvi’s Twitter accounts. Rizvi, on the other hand, has consistently tried to terrorise the Government of Pakistan into doing his bidding by pushing them to crack down on minorities such as Ahmadi Muslims.

We believe that the United Kingdom has had a history of providing shelter to those who are persecuted, from Kinder Transport children through to East African Asians and to those persecuted in developing countries throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Asia Bibi’s case shows how fragile and insecure Islamist extremists are when they are frightened of a woman who is of another faith. They have taken away her freedom for 8 years and then chased her away from her own country. However, it is not Asia Bibi who has been weakened. She has shown how spiritually defunct and imbecilic Islamist extremists are.

Asia Bibi should be offered sanctuary in the United Kingdom. Her presence in the United Kingdom will send out the right message that people who are persecuted because of their faith are welcome in our country. It will also send out a strong message to Islamist extremists in the UK. If you cannot respect the rights and presence of Asia Bibi, maybe it is you who should not be in this country.

The Pakistani lawyer who helped a Christian woman overturn her death sentence for blasphemy said on Saturday he had left the country in fear of his life after her acquittal earlier this week sparked street protests by Islamists.

Leaders of the ultra-Islamist Tehreek-e-Labaik (TLP) group blocked main roads in Pakistan’s biggest cites for three days, calling for the murder of the Supreme Court judges who acquitted Asia Bibi on Wednesday — urging their cooks and servants to kill them.

Saiful Mulook had kept a low profile during the years he represented Bibi, a mother-of-five who has been on death row since 2010, due to the highly sensitive nature of the case. Two politicians who had tried to help her have been assassinated.

Mulook told Reuters in a WhatsApp message he had gone abroad “just to save (my) life from angry mob” and because of fears for the safety of his family.

“I consulted and everybody is of this opinion (that I should leave),” he said, adding that he would return to the country to continue his work on the case if he was given protection by security forces.

The TLP called off the protests late on Friday after striking a deal with the government that would see authorities seek to put Bibi on an ‘exit control list’ barring her from leaving the country.

Bibi’s whereabouts are unknown, but Islamists have warned the authorities against taking her out of the country.

“There will be a war if they send Asia out of country,” TLP leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi said after the deal was reached.

Earlier in the week one of Rizvi’s deputies called for Pakistan’s Chief Justice Saqib Nisar and two other judges who ruled in the case to be murdered.

“Whoever, who has got any access to them, kill them before the evening,” TLP co-founder Muhammad Afzal Qadri told supporters.

The TLP was founded out of a movement supporting a bodyguard who assassinated Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer after he spoke in Bibi’s defence in 2011. Federal minister for minorities Shahbaz Bhatti was also killed after calling for her release.

Bibi was convicted of blasphemy in 2010 for allegedly making derogatory remarks about Islam after neighbours objected to her drinking water from their glass because she was not Muslim. She always denied having committed blasphemy.

The case has outraged Christians worldwide and been a source of division within Pakistan, where Islamist parties such as the TLP have framed Bibi’s release as Pakistan’s government caving into Western demands.

Bibi’s acquittal is being reviewed, though it is extremely rare for a review to overturn a Supreme Court ruling.

An Islamist party in Pakistan called for the expulsion of the Dutch ambassador on Wednesday as it launched a protest against a far-right Dutch politician’s plan for a cartoon competition featuring caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed.

Several thousand activists gathered in the eastern city of Lahore for the demonstration organised by Tehreek-e-Labbaik, a party that amassed the fifth largest number of votes in a general election last month having campaigned as a defender of the laws and punishments for crimes of blasphemy.

Party leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi set out from Lahore’s historic centre at the head of a protest he aims to take through the towns of Punjab province to the capital Islamabad, where protesters will stage a sit-in to pressure Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Imran Khan to cut diplomatic ties with the Netherlands.

“The Dutch ambassador should be immediately deported,” Labbaik spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi told Reuters. “We will only stop when the government meets this demand.”

Pakistan has already complained to the Dutch government about far-right parliamentarian Geert Wilders’ plans for a cartoon contest that will upset and provoke Muslims.

Wilders intends to display the cartoons on the walls of his political party’s room in parliament. He says he’s had “hundreds” of entries.

“The Foreign Office called the chargé d’affaires of the Netherlands and issued him a Demarche’ to record a protest,” the Pakistani prime minister’s office said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte said last week that the cartoon competition “was not something I would do” and his government was not associated with it.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said he planned to take up the issue with the United Nations and several world leaders.

“They don’t understand how much they hurt us when they do such acts,” Khan, a cricketer-turned-politician, said on Tuesday, a day after the upper house of parliament condemned the proposed cartoon competition.

Officials from the Punjab provincial government met with Labbaik leaders in Lahore in a vain attempt to persuade them to call off their protest.

“We told them to stop the protests because the Pakistan government is taking up the issue effectively,” an official involved on the talks told Reuters, adding that Labbaik representatives insisted the protest would only end once the Dutch envoy was expelled.

Last year, in a stand-off with the previous government, Labbaik shut down a main highway leading into Islamabad for nearly three weeks over a small change in wording to an electoral law changing a religious oath to a simple declaration. Labbaik said the change amounted to blasphemy.

The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz was forced to accept the resignation of law minister Zahid Hamid, who Labbaik held responsible for the change, after seven people were killed and nearly 200 wounded in a failed attempt by police to disperse protesters.