Bishops Profile
| Chairperson: * National Commission for Justice and Peace, Distinctions: Every year certificate from Red Crescent Punjab
since 1989. • Many articles on
Religious, Social and Literary topics in national and International
magazines and newspapers. • Member translation in Urdu Committee of Ecumenical Bible. • Translation of the Roman Missal and Sacramentary, manuals Catholic prayer and rituals for worships for all events in Urdu from Latin. What Bishop John Joseph’s act of self-annihilation should focus the Pakistan people’s attention on is firstly the predicament of the whole Christian community, and secondly, on the climate of intolerance created by the freedom allowed to obscurantisms to deny the rights of fellow human being, Muslim as well as non-Muslim, comments I. A. Rehman Daily ‘The News’ Lahore, 17 May 1998. Bishop Dr. John Joseph was widely respected for his peaceful nature and commitment to his convictions. What went through his mind when he decided to end his life is impossible to imagine. That it was an act of extreme desperation is obvious. But it could not have been wholly in response to the awarding of death sentence to Ayub Masih on a blasphemy charge. The verdict in the Ayub Masih case did upset the late Bishop because he believed that a man he considered innocent faced execution. More upsetting was the environment in which he found everything working against the members of his community. When it came to blasphemy charge he believed a Christian had little hope of receiving a fair deal from the police or from the system of justice. Witnesses who know that an accused is innocent are afraid to testify in his defence and lawyers are afraid to appear for him. Anyone in such straits could be driven to the limits of despair. It was also not possible for him to look at
blasphemy cases in isolation from other matters affecting his
community. The imposition of separate electorate on the religious
minorities, first without their having demanded it and then
despite their calls for its abandonment, had become a festering
sore. The arbitrary change in the version of the Objectives
Resolution that Zia made into a substantive part of the Constitution
indicated a resolve to curtail the minorities’ religious
rights. And, finally, the blasphemy law had created an environment in which hopes of justice had all but vanished. Surely, Dr. John Joseph’s mind was weighed down by much more than the Ayub Masih case and it would be wrong to believe he was the only Pakistani in that frame of mind.
The roots of minority communities’ frustration lie in the midst of a majority that decides their fate according to its own will and which is so obsessed with self-righteousness that reason is of no avail against it. This perception is good neither for a religious minority nor for the majority. It will create a situation, (if this has not already happened) in which prejudice and hate will drive groups of people to senseless strife. Sanity, humanitarianism and Pakistan’s interest as a civilized state demand that the whole question of the state’s meddling in the field of religious and the treatment of minorities should be examined with an open mind. In the present situation the exercise cannot but begin with a critical look at the blasphemy law. It is sometimes said that the idea of blasphemy laws was started by the colonial rulers when they rafted the Penal Code over 150 years ago. This is not entirely correct. Lord Macaulay and his associates acknowledged the multi-religious composition of their colony’s population and identified certain offences against religious under section 295, 296, 297 and 298, such as defiling of places of worship, disturbing of religious assembly, trespassing on places of burial, and use of words or sounds that hurt anyone’s religious feelings, and prescribed punishments for upto two years’ imprisonment and/or fine. Another provision (295-A) was added in the twenties after the Ghazi Ilmuddin episode, making insult to the religious beliefs of any class an offense. Two features of these provisions need to be noted. First, protection was provided to all religious groups on equal basis Secondly, conviction depended on proof that an offender deliberately intended to injure or insults anyone’s religious feelings. No change was made in these laws after independence until Zia-ul-Haq introduced a number of amendments and sections 295-B, 295-C, 298-A, 298-B and 298-C were added to the Pakistan Penal Code. The target of sections 298-B, and 298-C are exclusively Ahmadis while 295-B, 295-C and 298-A can be applied to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. All these new provisions violate the two criteria even the colonial lawmakers could not ignore. They protect the religious feelings of Muslims only and not of people subscribing to other religions and conviction is possible without proof of deliberate intent on the part of the offender. It is because of these flaws that the Zia made laws in the PPC chapter on offences against religion violate the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution. The principal blasphemy provision (Sec. 295-C) suffers the most from the flaws.The provision interested by Act III of 1986 said "whoever by words, either spoken or written, by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine." The provision was assailed on several grounds.
It was pointed that the word "defiles" had been taken
from the colonial-period draft of Section 295
where it had been used for a physical object (place of worship)
and its application to a holy personage was impossible. This
made the law extremely vague, violating the cardinal principle
that all laws must be specific. Also, absence of any reference
to deliberate intent to cause offence arbitrarily restricted
the scope for legitimate defense. While these issues were still
being debated the Federal Shariat Court ruled that the provision
of alternative punishment (life imprisonment) was contrary to
injunctions of Islam and hence invalid. |
