Punjab’s new information minister, Islamist politician Fayaz-ul-Hasan Chohan, has announced a ban on “vulgar” movie billboards in the Pakistani province, angering those who fear the growing influence of hardliners under new Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Since Khan’s party appointed him last week, Chohan has caused a number of rows, including with his visit to the grave of a man sentenced to death for killing the governor of Punjab in 2011, and with critical remarks about Nargis, a popular Pakistani singer and actress.

“If any vulgar billboard is found at any cinema in Punjab after three days, there will be a fine in first place, and if any one didn’t comply, that cinema will be shut down,” Chohan told a public meeting in the eastern city of Lahore.

“Is there any humanity that you print half-naked women and put them on big billboards?” he said.

Khan’s election victory in July was helped by strong support from Islamist parties. Chohan joined Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Justice Movement from the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan.

“It’s pure moral policing,” the left-leaning politician and rights activist Ammar Rashid said on Twitter.

Tehreek-e-Labbaik promoted in Birmingham

In an exclusive to Faith Matters, we can today highlight how an Islamist extremist group, Tehreek-e-Labbaik, was being promoted in Birmingham in the run-up to the Pakistani elections, the results of which are expected tomorrow.

After a tip-off from a concerned member of the public, we came across mobile phone footage which clearly shows two clerics promoting Tehreek-e-Labbaik at an electioneering meeting in Birmingham, which also incorporates religious incantations in order to whip up interest from the crowd.

We have highlighted the extremist nature of this group before, and we have also pointed out the failure of Twitter to remove the social media account of the spiritual leader of Tehreek-e-Labbaik, Khadim Hussain Rizvi.

Khadim Hussain Rizvi

Rizvi has repeatedly inflamed tensions in Pakistan since November 2017 when he rallied his Islamist followers, in the tens of thousands, against perceived changes to a piece of statute law, Ordinance XX or Ordinance Twenty (introduced by the military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, it stripped Ahmadis of their right to call themselves Muslims). Rizvi mobilised his Islamist followers in an attempt to stop any perceived changes to this ordinance, which culminated in a humiliating set of pleas by the Pakistani military for demonstrators to leave, whilst simultaneously handing out money to them. Rizvi’s call to maintain the status quo and thereby to retain the isolation of the Ahmadis literally shut down Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan.

Furthermore, the primary campaigning theme of Tehreek-e-Labbaik is ‘Death to Blasphemers’. Rizvi has repeatedly praised the murderers of the late Punjab Governor, Salmaan Taseer, and the Glasgow-based Ahmadi shopkeeper, Asad Shah, who was brutally murdered on a Glasgow street in March 2016. Rizvi moreover has referred to the killers, Mumtaz Qadri and Tanveer Ahmed, as ‘ghazis’ or Islamic warriors, even highlighting in graphic detail, in one mosque-based sermon, the number of times Ahmed stabbed the defenceless Shah. Rizvi is adept at using the concept of blasphemy to whip up his audience into a frenzy, demonstrating the dangerous rhetoric of the man and his political party in Pakistan.

Facebook and Tehreek-e-Labbaik

Faith Matters has been at the vanguard of ensuring that the Facebook pages of Tehreek-e-Labbaik were taken down, although recently a whole host of Facebook pages supporting and promoting the extremist cleric, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, have gone up again. This demonstrates the weakness of social media platforms, which cannot stop new accounts from being opened by extremist individuals or groups.

The following Facebook post by ‘Rivi Media’ clearly shows two clerics speaking at what seems to be a meeting of Barelwi Muslims in Birmingham. The first cleric commences by saying that he has been with and has served Rizvi for eight years and that Rizvi has worked tirelessly for the ‘deen’ – the faith of Islam. This is followed by cries of “SubhanAllah” (‘God is perfect’) by the young audience. It is clearly a sales pitch aimed at the youth who have come to listen, and who may well be eligible to vote in the Pakistani elections.

The young preacher then asks the audience to come to Pakistan to learn more about Tehreek-e-Labbaik and engage with them. What he neglects to tell the audience is that the whole basis of the political party is to lionise the murderers of ‘blasphemers’, meaning that anyone deemed to be a blasphemer effectively has a target on their head.

Worse still, the second preacher then breaks out into an anti-Hindu rant, stating that a vote for Tehreek-e-Labbaik is a vote for ‘martyrs’ in heaven such as the aforementioned Mumtaz Qadri, the bodyguard of Salman Taseer who murdered the latter for having defended a young Christian woman, Asia Bibi, from the nebulous charge of blasphemy. The preacher is heard to say that a vote for Tehreek-e-Labbaik blesses and honours individuals such as Qadri. He clearly is pushing for support both for Imran Khan and Tehreek-e-Labbaik.

Deep concerns

We are therefore deeply concerned as the extremism of Tehreek-e-Labbaik is bleeding into Muslim communities of Pakistani heritage here in the UK. We have seen how some British imams have cross-posted propaganda from this Islamist extremist cleric, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, and we now have tangible evidence of campaigning by representatives of Tehreek-e-Labbaik in places like Birmingham.

After the killing of Asad Shah, and open calls by Tehreek-e-Labbaik for murder, we strongly urge the Home Office to consider proscription of this group. The group has past form in promoting violent extremism from a highly tenuous fundament: they alone deem someone to have blasphemed Islam. This is not politics – it is the behaviour and rhetoric of extremists. It really is as simple as that.

You can imagine our shock when we realised this evening that an Islamist extremist who lauded the brutal murder of Glasgow shopkeeper, Asad Shah, was on Twitter. Worse still, he had a ‘verified’ blue tick next to him, giving him some legitimacy in the eyes of member of the public.

The individual, Khalid Hussain Rizvi has been highlighted by us in Faith Matters many times. If you want to know what Rizvi is about, just take a look at this video which we compiled on just a few of his sayings to large congregations in Pakistan. In a bizarre twist, we even commented on Rizvi in 2016, and his comments were made to fawning congregations where he describes a telephone conversation with Tanveer Ahmed, the brutal murderer of Asad Shah. Rizvi has called Ahmed a ‘hero’ on many occasions and a ‘lion’ for the brutal stabbing to death of Asad Shah, a much loved shopkeeper in Glasgow.

In September 2017, Rizvi’s political party, Tehreek-e-Labaik, polled 7,000 votes in local municipal elections in a by-election in Lahore. The only campaigning point was the lionising of bodyguard Mumtaz Qadri, who murdered Punjab Governor, Salman Taseer. The murder was based on Taseer’s defence of imprisoned Christian female, Asia Bibi. Tehreek-e-Labaik have also latched onto Tanveer Ahmed as another person whom they have lionised, thereby pushing the view that ‘blasphemers’ and those who protect minorities, are fair game for murder. Twitter are therefore providing a ‘verified’ Twitter platform to the spiritual leader of Tehreek-e-Labaik, Khalid Hussain Rizvi.

Rizvi, is in effect, an Islamist sympathiser who agrees with the violent extremism, particularly if it is against those protecting and advocating for minorities and Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan.

Given the facts, there is no justification that Twitter can provide for keeping Rizvi’s Twitter account open. 

We are increasingly concerned about the lack of due diligence by some faith leaders in the UK in meeting with preachers coming from Pakistan. In particular, there is a growing Islamist movement in Pakistan which supports violent extremism against ‘blasphemers’, Ahmadi Muslims, Shias, Christians and other minorities. These groups are not just the ones involved in direct terrorism in Pakistan, they are groups who also provide social services and who are able to rally tens of thousands of people on the basis of continuing the marginalisation of minorities. 

Here in the UK, we are concerned as to the legitimisation of such groups and preachers who have previously supported murderers such as Mumtaz Qadri, who murdered the Punjab governor Salman Taseer. There is evidence that a handful of these preachers who are on video praising the extremist, have been met with and promoted as ‘moderates’ by Imams in the UK. Pictures and social media posts of Imams in the UK standing next to such individuals, do nothing to delineate Islam and Muslims from the extremist messaging that such preachers pour out when they lionise people like Qadri, for murdering someone whose views they disagreed with. Frankly, Muslims deserve better and especially when Muslim communities are so under the spotlight at the moment and when headlines in some media sources do nothing but further marginalise them in the eyes of the wider public.

We will keep a watching brief on this situation and urge faith leaders in the UK to conduct checks and some due diligence on the groups and individuals they meet with and who visit the UK. 

The murder of Asad Shah, the Glasgow based shopkeeper was a brutal affair. We know this, partly because the spiritual leader of the Islamist group Tehrik-e-Labaik, Allama Khadim Hussain Rizvi, described in detail the actions that the convicted murderer, Tanveer Ahmed, undertook on the defenceless Shah.

The description of the murder of Asad Shah was not made in dusgust by Hussain Rizvi, the spiritual leader of the Islamist group in Pakistan. Yet, it was made in a manner which lionised the murderer, calling him a ‘Ghazi’ or warrior for the defence of Islam.

In September of this year, the Islamist party won over 7,000 votes in a local election and the Party was born from lionising another convicted murderer, Mumtaz Qadri. Qadri was the bodyguard of Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab, who subsequently went onto murder him at an Islamabad market in January 2011. Taseer was an outspoken critic of the country’s Blasphemy Laws and he had defended the rights of Christian minorities and individuals like Asia Bibi. Out of this brutal murder was born the Tehrik-e-Labaik Islamist party which has also acquired recorded phone conversations with Tanveer Ahmed, from Barlinnie prison in Scotland. Ahmed’s ‘messages’ to people in Pakistan have been played to Tehrik-e-Labaik audiences in the country who sit around their spiritual leader Hussain Rizvi. Rizvi has used the audio-tapes to whip up his audiences into frenzies, using deeply emotive language around the defence of Prophet Muhammad, whilst urging listeners to defend their faith. This has been code for the use of threats and violence.

The recorded phone conversations are used to whip up audiences into a frenzy around Hussain Rizvi who regularly has made a point of lionising Tanveer Ahmed,  now in Barlinnie prison. The main theme for Tehrik-e-Labaik has been the ‘defence’ of Islam and the vilification of those who ‘blaspheme’ against Islam, yet it is so easy to forget the brutal actions of people like Ahmed in this extremist charade which is being played out in Pakistan. It is important to reflect on the comments of Judge Lady Rae who presided over the murder trial of Tanveer Ahmed.

Summing up after the guilty verdict of Ahmed, Judge Lady Rae told him:

“This was a barbaric, premeditated and wholly unjustified killing of a much loved man who was a pillar of the local community.”

The head of a new Pakistani Islamist party that lionizes the killer of a provincial governor said it would take its rallying cry of “death to blasphemers” to next year’s general election, after its surprisingly strong showing in a recent vote.

The Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistan party, which won more than 7,000 votes at a weekend by-election, was born out of a protest movement supporting Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard of the governor of Punjab province who gunned down his boss in 2011 over his call to reform strict blasphemy laws.

Supporters of Tehreek-e-Labaik waved photos of Qadri, who became an icon for Muslim hardliners after his execution last year, at campaign rallies in the eastern city of Lahore, where it won 6 percent of the vote in a contest for the seat vacated by ousted former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

“He is a hero,” party leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi said when asked about Qadri, adding that after its third-place finish in Sunday’s by-election it would focus on next year’s poll. “Our preparation starts from today. We will contest bravely.”

While the party has almost no chance of gaining power next year, it is part of a new crop of political movements that espouse stricter Islamic rule as a remedy to corruption accusations and squabbling among Pakistan’s three main parties.

A stronger showing for Islamists could give them more influence after the election, expected to be hard-fought after the Supreme Court barred Sharif from holding office.

In an interview with Reuters, Rizvi outlined his vision of governance according the Barelvi branch of Islam, of which he is a prominent cleric.

Frequently citing Koranic verses and Pakistani history, he said his party could solve corruption problems “in a day” through stricter adherence to sharia, or Islamic law.

“Sharia will have to be enforced. No one should be worried about it,” he said, sitting in the upper room of a Lahore mosque surrounded by followers, many who had adopted Qadri’s signature look of long hair and kohl-lined eyes.

He acknowledged his vision would mean some changes to daily life, giving the example of barring women from working as airline flight attendants.

DEATH TO BLASPHEMERS

In its party platform, Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistan calls for free education, free healthcare and social justice.

But it is best known for its public and passionate support for Mumtaz Qadri – campaign rallies featured posters with Qadri’s photo – and its insistence that Muslim-majority Pakistan’s blasphemy laws should remain among the world’s harshest.

Dozens of people convicted of blasphemy are currently on death row and at least 65 Pakistanis have been murdered over blasphemy allegations since 1990, according to the Center for Research and Security Studies.

One of the highest-profile killings was of Punjab Governor Taseer, who had called for the laws to be re-examined after a minority Christian woman was sentenced to death for blasphemy.

After his arrest over the killing, bodyguard Qadri drew a slew of admirers among Islamists who showered him with rose petal at court hearings. Tens of thousands thronged his funeral last year to condemn Sharif’s government for his hanging.

Tehreek-e-Labaik spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi said the party started out as The Movement to Free Mumtaz Qadri, but changed its name and entered politics after his execution.

Asked about Qadri’s role as an inspiration to the party, leader Rizvi said: “He is a hero until doomsday. He is a hero beyond doomsday.”

Asked if any Muslim has the obligation to kill a blasphemer, Rizvi said: “No … there is a law. Hand him over to that.”

But Qadri, he added, was justified because Pakistani police had failed to charge Taseer with blasphemy for criticising the law.

VOTES FOR ISLAMISTS

Tehreek-e-Labaik surprised many by its relatively strong showing in the Lahore by-election to fill the parliamentary seat left vacant when the Supreme Court ousted Sharif over unreported income, in a case initiated by opposition figure Imran Khan.

The seat was won, as expected, by Sharif’s wife, Kulsoom, but the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party’s share of the vote in the constituency was cut to 49.3 percent from 61 percent in a 2013 election.

Khan, a former cricket star, saw his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party increase its share to 37.6 percent from 35 percent in the last vote.

But much of the PML-N’s margin loss came from votes cast for candidates of new Islamist parties.

In addition to Tehreek-e-Labaik, a newly declared party linked to Hafiz Saeed, named by the United States and India as the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, won about 5 percent of the Lahore vote.

Religious parties have never gained more than a few seats in Pakistan’s parliament because they tend to appeal to one particular sect or a single issue, such as blasphemy.

Still, a surge of support for the ultra-religious parties could drain away votes from mainstream groups and potentially give Islamists leverage in policy-making.

Tehreek-e-Labaik’s Rizvi said his only goal was to see a stricter vision of Islam enshrined in the law of the land.

“We want to bring the religion of Islam to the throne,” he said.

A Pakistani Senate committee is set to debate how to prevent the country’s blasphemy laws being applied unfairly, despite opposition from religious conservatives who support legislation that carries a mandatory death penalty for insulting Islam.

Senator Farhatullah Babar told Reuters that the Senate Committee on Human Rights, of which he is a member, will start discussions on blasphemy laws as early as next week, based on recommendations from a 24-year-old report.

He said it would be the first time in decades that any parliamentary body had considered a formal proposal to stop the abuse of the blasphemy laws.

According to Babar, the committee would consider a proposal making it binding to investigate complaints before registering a case, to ensure “genuine blasphemy” had been committed and the law was not being used to settle scores, as critics say it is.

He also said the committee would debate whether life imprisonment was an adequate punishment, instead of the mandatory death penalty.

Many conservatives in Pakistan consider even criticizing the laws as blasphemy, and in 2011 a Pakistani governor, Salman Taseer, was assassinated by his bodyguard after calling for reform of the laws.

His killer was hailed as a hero by religious hardliners, and tens of thousands of supporters attended his funeral after he was executed last year.

If the committee makes any recommendations, it would be only the first step in a long process to bring about change in how the laws are enforced.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s office declined to comment on the Senate committee’s moves.

His party’s support would be needed for any measures to move forward, and while legislation protecting women’s rights has been passed and Sharif has reached out to minorities, it is unclear if he would risk a backlash over blasphemy.

UNEARTHED REPORT

Hundreds of Pakistanis are on death row for blasphemy convictions, and at least 65 people, including lawyers, defendants and judges, have been murdered over blasphemy allegations since 1990, according to figures from the Centre for Research and Security Studies based in the capital Islamabad.

Pakistan’s religious and political elites almost universally steer clear of speaking against blasphemy laws, but a small group of lawmakers has been looking for ways to reduce abuses.

Babar said the Human Rights Committee hit a “gold mine” when he discovered a 24-year-old Senate report that called for a more specific definition of blasphemy and said further debate was needed on whether expunging “imprisonment of life” from an earlier law had been correct.

“So we convinced other senators that here we have a chance, we have a starting point, we have this report in hand. Let’s debate it and see how we can prevent abuse of this law,” Babar said.

However, powerful religious conservatives who have millions of followers strongly support the laws.

Tahir Ashrafi, head of the influential Pakistan Ulema Council of Muslim clerics, said it would oppose any change.

“Make new laws to punish those who abuse blasphemy laws,” Ashrafi told Reuters. “But no one can even think about changing this law.”

“FIRMER STANCE”

Last week, Pakistani police arrested 150 hardline activists rallying in support of the blasphemy laws on the anniversary of the assassination of Taseer, the Punjab governor shot dead by his bodyguard for calling for reform.

Police have also resisted a demand by hardliners to register a blasphemy case against Shaan Taseer, the slain governor’s son, over a Christmas message calling for prayers for those charged under the “inhumane” legislation.

“This government has shown a firmer stance than the government when my father was martyred,” Shaan Taseer said.

But public opinion remains a major obstacle to reform. On the outskirts of Islamabad, thousands still visit the shrine of Mumtaz Qadri, executed last February for Taseer’s murder.

The large shrine, with a glass roof and shiny marble floors, was built over his grave days after the burial.

Taxi driver Waheed Gul says he has come to the shrine every day since it was built:

“What better way to spend my days than to pray every day at the grave of someone who sent a blasphemer to hell?”

A video from an influential Pakistani hate preacher glorifying the actions of Tanveer Ahmed will likely be subject to police investigation.

In a five-minute video uploaded to YouTube, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a Barelvi cleric, Pakistan’s largest grouping of Sunni Muslims, recounted Ahmed’s twisted account of the night he murdered Asad Shah. He confirmed that he had spoken with Ahmed from his prison cell in Glasgow’s Barlinnie Prison.

Tanveer Ahmed had tod Rizvi that: “We are not terrorists. We are the protectors of the Prophet’s honour. A terrorist kills the innocent people but a lover picks up the person who insults the prophet from the crowd and kills only him.”

His phraseology is a cause of concern. Not just for its threatening overtures. But in his unwavering belief that his actions were not in isolation. For Ahmed, he has continued the work of others who had murdered in ‘defence’ of, or out of ‘love’ for, the Prophet Muhammad. In Urdu, this terminology is known as Aashiq e Rasool.

According to Rizvi, Ahmed had told him: “I took a knife and went to his shop leaving the knife outside. Just the way Ghazi Ilm-ud-din had done. Ghazi Ilm-ud-din had kept his knife outside.” This statement had sent Rizvi’s audience into rapturous chants of “Glory to Allah”.

This statement invokes a folk hero who was hung in colonial India. Ilm-ud-din (d. 1929) was an illiterate young man who murdered Mahashay Rajpal, the Lahore-based publisher of Rangeela Rasool, a book many Muslims considered disrespectful towards the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who later founded the state of Pakistan, defended him. Yet he could not prevent the colonial court from passing the death sentence.

At 20-years-old, Ilm-ud-din’s actions became that of legend. Thousands attended his funeral – including Muhammad Iqbal, Pakistan’s leading poet. His eulogy to Ilm-ud-din proclaimed: “Asi wekhde reh gaye, aye Tarkhaana da munda baazi le gaya” (We kept sitting idle while this carpenter’s son took the lead). Popular culture has helped entrench his folk hero status. Even today, 87 years after his hanging, many still make the journey to his shrine. They attach the title of Ghazi to his name – a Muslim warrior who was victorious against the enemies of Islam.

The Facebook page Ghazi Ilam Din Shaheed, which has over 2,500 ‘likes’, shares videos of individuals visiting his shrine. Propaganda encourages individuals to share a picture of the ‘lover of the prophet’. It ends with the ominous threat that ‘disrespectful people will be punished’.

The murder of reformist politician Salman Taseer, by his bodyguard Mumtaz Qadri in 2011, invoked similar passions.

Khadim Hussain Rizvi had used the term ‘lover of the prophet’ when discussing Mumtaz Qadri’s conviction in 2015. He told the Guardian: “In 1929 we could not stop the execution of the lover of the prophet because the British were in power and Muslims were a minority“.

Many saw Qadri as a hero. Qadri claimed it was his religious duty to murder Taseer. Lawyers soon rushed to his defence. When asked why, one lawyer told the newspaper Dawn: “Ghazi Ilam Din, who killed a ‘blasphemer’, was represented by Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah.”

Mumtaz Qadri was hung for his crimes in February 2016. Qadri remains a folk hero to some. After the murder of Asad Shah, the BBC uncovered Tanveer Ahmed’s adoration for Qadri. Murdering Asad Shah had allowed him to mimic his idol. Propaganda from the religious right invokes the idea that Qadri and Ahmed are kindred spirits in their ‘defence’ of the prophet. Nor should it surprise anyone to learn that the Ghazi Ilam Din Shaheed Facebook page has shared images that venerate Tanveer Ahmed.

This toxic narrative predates the founding of Pakistan. It frames the despicable as something noble, granting individuals false authority over religious matters. A failure to challenge this narrative may inspire others to carry out similar crimes in the future.