INTERIOR Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan’s assertion that he would consider all options to ensure that social media in Pakistan did not carry blasphemous content evoked a largely positive response.

There were many who were in agreement with the minister that it was a serious issue and hence deserved the sort of attention it was getting; then there were some others who criticised Chaudhry Nisar for having skewed priorities when terrorism should be on top.

As far as I was concerned, I didn’t disagree with the minister as the two aren’t mutually exclusive. My personal view is that my faith and all the revered personalities connected with it enjoy such a sacred, fortified place in my heart that they can never be moved by anything or anyone or, heaven forbid, diminished.

Disagreement on policy issues or even in personal disputes should be no reason to level false allegations.

But there are others in far greater numbers who find the presence of such material on social media an affront to their faith and want social media cleansed of it. I must say I have never once accessed such offensive material, though I use social media regularly and intensively.

The interior minister is right, then, in asking social media platforms such as Facebook to help Pakistan block such material so that their users in the country can connect with family and friends far from them without having to worry about coming across such offensive content.

There are many instances where Facebook has agreed to remove and/or block content seen as being against local laws, whether in Israel in cases of ‘incitement’ to terrorism and murder, or in Australia, for example, where human rights organisations challenged content against the indigenous people as hate speech.

Chaudhry Nisar may be one of the more controversial ministers in the current government, but he was also spot on when he addressed the issue of the bloggers/social media activists who were ‘disappeared’ in January this year. (All but one reappeared after several weeks.)

Unnamed sources accused the activists after they had gone missing of having posted blasphemous content on social media and alleged that they were the administrators of some Facebook pages and sites with such repugnant content.

Once they reappeared, each of these men categorically denied ever posting blasphemous content on social media and, though it was never officially confirmed, I suspect they were finally released by their captors after they were cleared by the agencies of disseminating such material.

At the time, Chaudhry Nisar had made an impassioned plea to the media not to become a conduit for false allegations as it caused untold anguish to the families of the missing men and could also imperil their lives and their families’ too.

The much-maligned interior minister did not get the sort of support as his sensible statement warranted in this particular instance, where perhaps the bloggers’ only crime was their vocal disagreement with the narrative advanced by the security state.

There can be no two opinions about blasphemy in our society, where the laws of the land and the faith of the majority forbid it and consider it a serious crime punishable by the toughest of penalties.

At the same time, we need to look at what faith and the law say about making false allegations, as we have recently witnessed a number of cases where such charges have been levelled because of disagreement on policy issues, or even in personal disputes, to silence and overpower an adversary.

Against the backdrop of the security forces’ valiant fight against terrorists committed to destroying all that we hold dear, two recent examples of retired senior officers using the blasphemy weapon have left me wondering about their motives and, if I am honest, their sanity.

The first was a retired lieutenant general who is now among the TV channels’ favourite ‘defence’ commentators. He distributed to a WhatsApp group of about 200 people a video by ‘Middle East Video Productions’ carrying malicious blasphemy allegations against the bloggers.

The ‘video documentary’, comprising still photos with a narration in Urdu, also accused the bloggers of acting at the behest of India and Iran. Having asked around and then done a search on the internet to find out any information about Middle East Video Pro­ductions, only to draw a blank, it is safe to assume this entity operates out of some organisation’s basement.

It was disgusting to say the least. The second case left me feeling sick to my stomach too. This happened on one of the ‘mainstream news channels’ where a retired Pakistani air marshal featured alongside two ‘journalists’.

The trio were discussing the prime minister’s speech on the occasion of Holi last week, which was widely lauded for advocating a pluralistic and inclusive vision of Pakistan, wherein he also reinforced the message that minorities are equal citizens of the country.

The retired AM, with an intense expression on his face, issued an edict, a fatwa (for how else can one describe it), when he said that Nawaz Sharif’s words “amounted to blasphemy in my book” and should be dealt with as such. Yes, incredible as it may sound, those were his words.

I count myself one among the millions in the country who look at corruption with disdain, whether the guilty party is a politician, a government official or someone from the defence forces. Shamelessly, I am a supporter of the democratic dispensation too.

But hate dictators as I do, it wouldn’t occur to me to level spurious allegations of blasphemy against even a dictator, and I will tell you why. Just read the honours list from this March 23. You won’t be able to count the number of martyrs among those given gallantry awards.

There can be no worse affront to the memory of our brave fallen soldiers — who gave their lives battling terrorists, intolerant bigots and for a better, more open society — than making false allegations of blasphemy.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

abbas.nasir@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2017