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Pakistan’s extremists weaponize pornography to capture ‘blasphemers’
January 16 was Religious Freedom Day in the United States, a moment to reflect upon the importance of protecting the right “to explore life’s great questions, embrace what our conscience discerns to be true, and express that truth in private and public life”.
In Western nations, that right seems all but self-evident. Elsewhere, people risk their lives to worship as they believe.
This is the preface to an extraordinary story from Pakistan at the intersection of religious persecution, pornography addiction, social media, organised crime, and Islamic fundamentalism.
Late last year Voicepk.net, a Pakistani human rights website, described gross human rights violations engineered by a sophisticated racket for extortion and religious persecution. In Pakistan it is called the “blasphemy business group”. More than 400 young people are behind bars for sharing blasphemous images on WhatsApp. Six have been convicted – some jailed for life, other condemned to death. Some have died in custody after torture. Most of them are Muslims, but a handful are Christians. Minority groups appear to be disproportionately targeted.
The racket works like this, according to the father of one of the accused:
“These young people are lured through [Facebook pages] to become friends with girls, and are later asked to switch to WhatsApp groups for personal conversations. Once they begin their chatting there, the girls offer them gifts and promise them jobs or relations to gain their trust.
“Next the girl sends an explicit image with holy scriptures [from the Qur’an] written over it, or maybe some other blasphemous content. The unsuspecting victim demands to know why she has sent such an image to which she feigns ignorance pretending she does not know what he is talking about. Once the victim inadvertently sends back the image or content, the girl instantly blocks him, and traps him for sharing blasphemous content.”
A report from the National Commission for Human Rights confirms that the racket exists. Its epicentre is Punjab province. Social media has enabled accusations of blasphemy to skyrocket. In 2022, only 64 people were imprisoned for this crime; by July 2024, that figure was already 767. Of those 581 were in Punjab.
Earlier this month, a courageous Pakistani journalist, Azaz Syed, interviewed relatives of four young men languishing in prison for blasphemy. They told similar stories of entrapment and a sudden arrest. Many lawyers are reluctant to take blasphemy cases. Their fear is not unfounded, as defence lawyers have faced harassment, violence, or even assassination. Defending an alleged blasphemer is often seen as equivalent to supporting blasphemy itself.
On-line vigilante groups seem to be responsible for the sudden rise in blasphemy allegations.
The most active of these is the Legal Commission on Blasphemy Pakistan (LCBP), which describes itself as a network of 13 organisations “taking decisive action against blasphemy”. It told AFP news agency that it is prosecuting more than 300 cases. Sheraz Ahmad Farooqi, one of LCBP’s leaders, told AFP that more than a dozen volunteers are tracking online blasphemy – "God has chosen them for this noble cause". Farooqi appears to be associated with an extremist Islamic political party called Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan.
The noble cause involves entrapment, deceit, torture, and criminal collusion with police. The families of the victims are ostracised, even by their own relatives.
"It is absolutely terrifying how technology can and is being used to weaponise this law further," says Saroop Ijaz, the Pakistan representative for Human Rights Watch.

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In January lawyers for victims organised a press conference about the “blasphemy business group”. The mother of one young man, Muhammed Zamzam, told the media that her son was blind and could not have committed the crime he was accused of. The police demanded a bribe of 100,000 rupees (US$360). She paid, but they still would not release her son.
The racket is turbocharged by a provision in Pakistani criminal law called a First Information Report (FIR), a relic of British colonial rule. Anyone who is aware of a crime can lodge a FIR with the police. It is an allegation that someone has committed a serious crime. The police must register it and investigate – even if the FIR appears to be false or politically motivated. FIRs can be – and are -- used as weapons in personal vendettas, business disputes, or religious hatred.
The scope for false accusations is immense. In fact, in 2015, Pakistan’s Supreme Court admitted that “The majority of blasphemy cases are based on false accusations stemming from property issues or other personal or family vendettas rather than genuine instances of blasphemy and they inevitably lead to mob violence against the entire community.”
But penalties for lodging a defamatory FIR are scant. Once an FIR has been lodged, it can be very difficult to quash. The victim will have to appeal to the High Court – an expensive and lengthy process.
Most of the people now in jail for blasphemy were apprehended after vigilantes reported them to the police.
The allegations in these FIRs are often transparently false. Several unrelated people, the LCBP report found, were sometimes grouped together in the same FIR. In other cases, identical wording was used in separate FIRs. But the cybercrime unit of Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency – even if officers are not corrupt, as they often are – is forced to accept the FIRs and take the victims into custody.
The most severe penalty for blasphemy is death. In fact, in the minds of extremists, it is the only appropriate penalty. No one has ever been executed in Pakistan for this crime, but it can take years for cases to come to trial. Convictions are common, although they are often overturned on appeal. Some people have been lynched before their trial.
Even if the accused are exonerated, their lives and the lives of their families have been ruined. “These individuals face a grim reality where prolonged trials can take decades to conclude, leaving them in a perpetual state of vulnerability and despair,” according to the LCBP report.
Massimo Introvigne, of the Bitter Winter website, which tracks religious freedom issues, observes that “the criminal business of fabricated blasphemy serves a dual purpose. It helps some extremists make good money, and at the same time perpetuates the lie that hundreds of blasphemers are active in Pakistan, thus justifying the existence and even the reinforcement of anti-blasphemy laws.”
This brief documentary from Unreported World, a UK production for Channel 4, is a window onto the fanaticism of supporters of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. It makes painful viewing.
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Michael Cook is editor of Mercator.
Image credit: a protest against Pakistan’s blasphemy laws in 2018 in Geneva / Wikipedia
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