In the News: Asia Bibi’s Lawyer at London Conference

Asia Bibi: Lawyer defies death threats over Christian’s case, Monidipa Fouzder, The Law Society Gazette, 2018-11-27.

The lawyer for a Christian woman who faced a death sentence for eight years after being convicted of blasphemy says he has no regrets about defending her – despite facing death threats himself. Last month Pakistan’s most senior judges overturned Asia Bibi’s death sentence, defying personal death threats and the promise by an Islamist political party to ‘paralyse the country within hours’ if Bibi was set free.

Bibi’s lawyer, Saif ul-Malook told an International Conference on Sharia, Segregation and Secularism in London on Sunday that, in his 38 years of practice, he had never heard of a situation ‘where a group of people come with such a demand that they will kill the highest constitutional court judges if the verdict does not come to their wishes’. ul-Malook stressed that it was a ‘small group of people in Pakistan, not Pakistan’.

Explaining the case, ul-Malook told the conference that Bibi was working in a field for £1 a week: ‘You can imagine what was her status. She had never gone to school… She cannot write her name.’ Bibi offered water to two Muslim girls who refused, which led to ‘hard words exchanged between them’. The imam of the village mosque called the district imams. After five days, Bibi was arrested.

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The conference heard that ul-Malook worked on Bibi’s case for four years. Her appeal was heard in the Supreme Court on 8 October and judgment was reserved. The court’s 56-page judgment, overturning Bibi’s sentence, was published on 31 October.

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The conference urged the UK government to grant Bibi protection and asylum. Its resolution supporting Bibi states: ‘Whilst Asia Bibi has been released on appeal in November 2018 after eight years on death row, her life is in danger and she is living in hiding. Islamist groups have been calling for her death as well as the death of her lawyer Saif ul-Malook and the judges who acquitted her […] Despite her urgent need for refuge, the UK Foreign Office has urged the Home Office not to grant Asia Bibi political asylum in the UK out of safety concerns. This decision amounts to a gross violation of the very idea of asylum as a human right.’

Islam’s overwhelming obsession with blasphemy has caused and continues to cause great damage. The case of Asia Bibi and the protests by Islamists against her acquittal are a vivid and painful example of that fanatical obsession. We salute the courage of her lawyer Saif ul-Malook, the Pakistan Supreme Court judges who acquitted her, and her other supporters, in that embattled country, all of whom have risked their lives by standing up against the worst elements of political Islam. Already, two prominent Pakistani political figures have paid with their lives: Minorities Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti and former Governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, both assassinated in 2011.

See also:

• 2018 Resolution in Support of Asia Bibi, International Conference on Sharia, Segregation and Secularism, London, 2018-11-25.
• British activists examine Shariah law, Pakistan’s Asia Bibi case, Adeel Khan, Deutsche Welle, 2018-11-26.
  “The case of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman who was recently freed from a blasphemy death sentence, was discussed at a conference in London, prompting activists and scholars to analyze Shariah law in general.”
• The Betrayal of Asia Bibi, Hardeep Singh, Quillette, 2018-11-21.
• European Muslims’ support for Asia Bibi falls short, Shamil Shams, Deutsche Welle, 2018-11-16.
  “Islamic organizations in Germany and Britain have expressed support for the Pakistani woman who was recently freed from a blasphemy death sentence. However, experts say more Muslims should oppose the idea of blasphemy.”