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Hundreds Of University Students In Pakistan Beat A Student To Death For Blasphemy

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Updated on 5 Sep, 2017 at 12:39 pm

Remember the killing of Farkhunda Malikzada? She was brutally murdered by a mob on false charges of blasphemy. That was in Afghanistan and happened exactly two years ago.

Now something similar has happened in Pakistan, the wonderful country in the eyes of a select group of Indian liberals.

A 23-year-old university student was brutally killed by other students of his university on charges of blasphemy.

 

Mashal Khan was a student of Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
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The incident happened at Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Mashal Khan Yusufzai was a student of journalism. He was quite active on social media and often posted messages of tolerance, secularism and feminism. He was also strictly anti-Mullahs.

 

This, perhaps, did not go down well with the Islamists who thrive in almost every nook and corner of the country and are even backed by the establishment.

A huge group of students, around 4000 as per Pakistani media mouthpieces, targeted Mashal inside the university campus on Thursday.

They accused him of committing blasphemy, a very sensitive subject in the Islamic Republic. According to the police, Mashal was accused by the mob of “publishing blasphemous content online”. According to eyewitnesses, he was accused of promoting the Ahmadi faith.

Anyway, the mob dragged him out of the building, stripped him naked, repeatedly beat him up and shot him. They kept hitting his dead body with stones, wooden planks or anything they could get their hands on.

While blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan, Ahmadi Muslims are persecuted under law.

 

Mashal was buried in his ancestral village on Friday. Twitter

As is usual in Pakistan, there was no evidence to even remotely suggest that Mashal had committed blasphemy. Like it happens in the Islamic Republic, where terrorists and fundamentalists find safe haven, the mob had done what it wanted to do – kill. And as is normal in such situations, there is very high chance that not one member of the mob will be punished.

But wait till you see how Mashal was killed. The level of brutality displayed by bloodthirsty fundamentalists will put Hitler to shame. And remember these are students, and students are the future of a country.

 

 

Here is another one:

 

If this is how students react to blasphemy, it can now be safely assumed that Pakistan is a failed state.

Yes, there are sane voices from within Pakistan that are condemning Mashal’s killing but they are few and powerless before a de facto military-controlled state, which breeds terrorists to attack neighbors.

 

The problem with Pakistan is two-fold: One, it is the world’s first and only nuclear-powered Islamic Republic, and, two, the government allows fundamentalists and terrorists to thrive without fear of law – if there is any.

 

Besides Mashal, the fundamentalist students attacked another student named Abdullah accusing him of being an Ahmadi.

Since the Ordinance XX allows for the persecution of the Ahmadi Muslims (they are legally not recognized as Muslims in Pakistan), the fundamentalists find it easy to kill them and destroy their property. Recently a mob burnt alive a baby, a seven-year-old girl and an old woman from the Ahmadi community on false charges of blasphemy.

 

Technically, anyone can be killed in Pakistan if accused of blasphemy. All a mullah has to do is to accuse; no proof is needed. And the mob will do the rest.

Even a rumor can get anyone killed. Pakistan’s media reports that in Mashal’s case the mob appeared to have been incited by rumors.

 

Islamists protesting against blasphemy in Pakistan. EPA

There is another angle to Mashal’s death. Some say that he spoke against the university administration and someone from the administration may have created circumstances for his killing.

 

But all of this points to an even more dangerous reality: If this is how Pakistan’s students behave then it can be safely assumed that it is now a failed state.

If students are afflicted by a lack of common sense and religious bigotry then the future of any country is doomed. What if any of these students one day assumes an influential position in the country?

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