Pakistanis continued protests against blasphemy by a website on Friday, the second day of two-day countrywide demonstrations, as religious leaders demanded the Muslim rulers to ensure international legislation for death punishment to blasphemers or step down.Addressing rallies, clerics rejected an apology to the Muslim world by US cartoonist Molly Norris who initiated a blasphemous cartoon contest on Facebook and called for death punishment to her. They also called for jihad against blasphemers as the only way to stop recurrence of the crime by the West against the Holy Prophet which, in the recent past, had assumed alarming frequency, mainly due to Muslim rulers' apathetic attitude.
Friday saw growing protests against blasphemy. Religious leaders, addressing charged protesters, held the Muslim rulers responsible for the increasing trend of blasphemy and asked them to display their love for the Holy Prophet by taking concrete action.
In Lahore, the largest public meeting and protest rally was held by Tehrik-e-Hurmat-e-Rasool (THR), an alliance of about 30 religious parties formed in response to European blasphemous campaigns since 2005, outside Masjid Shuhada. The participants were chanting slogans like “Death to blasphemers,' “Lay down lives to save the Holy Prophet's honour,' “Expel all Americans to purge the Land of the Pure,' etc. Addressing the protesters, leaders warned the West that if it continued committing blasphemy of the Prophet of Islam in the name of “freedom of expression having no boundaries,' they must keep in mind that the response of the Muslim world would also know no boundaries.
Convener Maulana Ameer Hamza condemned the silence of the Pakistani rulers on the issue. He also lashed out at the PML-N leaders and the Sharif family, saying they (the Sharifs) claimed themselves to be lovers of the Holy Prophet and builders of the country's nuclear bomb but were ashamed of protecting the Holy Prophet's honour and countering the US drones with their nuclear bomb. He warned that if blasphemy was not stopped and perpetrators not punished, neither the US ambassador nor the embassy would be spared. He said the Sharif family had spent nine years in exile in Saudi Arabia but upon their return they abolished Arabic language from the syllabus in the province and made the language of blasphemers compulsory.
Dr Farid Paracha of the Jamaat-e-Islami demanded initiation of a competition to expose the holocaust myth in response to the cartoon competition. Zubair Ahmad Zaheer said Muslims had the right to cross every limit to avenge blasphemy. Qari Yaqoob Sheikh termed it journalistic terrorism of the West against Islam.
