Zahir Shah's troubles began in 1994, when the local priest accused him of desecrating the Quran and insulting Prophet Muhammad under a controversial blasphemy law implemented in Pakistan.

Shah was jailed for three years, after which a local court released him on bail given the charges against him by the local priest, Maulvi Faqir Muhammad. He then moved to Faisalabad city and did not return to his home in eastern Punjab province until eight years later.

But his return in early July still annoyed the mullah, who used the mosque's loudspeaker to incite people to stone what he called an apostate to death.

Shah, 40, was lynched to death by a mob. Around 300 people have been accused of participating in the gruesome act.

The incident was a big blow to government efforts to curtail the misuse of the blasphemy law — a problem that has been there as old as the law itself, enacted by former dictator Zia ul Haq in 1981.

Since that time, the religious lobby has acted as both the abuser and custodian of the law, critics say. The blasphemy law carries a maximum punishment of death.

The room for abuse has been such that police often quickly arrest alleged blasphemers and keep them in jail for long periods to protect them from outraged mullahs, who have been known to take the law in their own hands.

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said that six persons were convicted under the law last year. Of these, three were given death sentences and the others face long imprisonment.

Fifty-one new cases were registered under the law last year. Three were against women and the accused both Muslims and non-Muslims.

Curtail abuse

But these days, the accused are not safe even in jail. Yousaf Ali, one such victim, was shot dead by his fellow prisoners in northern Lahore city on June11.

Ali was known among colleagues as a humanist who wrote about his viewsin newspapers and organised a meeting of the World Assembly for Human Excellence in 1997.

His actions irked an orthodox religious group called 'The Aalmi Majlis Khatme-Nabowat Pakistan', which was formed to protect the finality of Prophethood (meaning that the Prophet Muhammad is the last Prophet of God).

The group accused Ali of projecting himself as the prophet, called him a heretic and registered a case against him with the police.

A lower court sentenced him to death in Aug 2000. His appeal against the verdict was still pending in the higher court at the time of his death.

Rights activists say that the fate of Shah and Ali are not isolated incidents. They say that since reports have gone out that the Pakistani government is quietly working to introduce changes in the blasphemy law to curtail its abuse, fundamentalist groups seem to have decided to punish the accused themselves.

"The trend of violence against those accused of blasphemy within jails has been rising steadily over the past two months," said Joseph Francis, coordinator for the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (Class).

At least 11 persons accused of blasphemy have been harassed or beaten up in the past two months at various jails in Punjab and his group continues to receive harassment complaints in other cities, according to Francis.

On June 17, Pervaiz Masih, a former school principal, was attacked by another inmate. "I was asleep in my bed when a man came and started beating me up," he said, adding that the attacker tore up the Bible and other books on Christianity in the cell.

Masih called his brother-in-law, who then sought help from Class, which has long appealed to the military-led government to keep alleged blasphemers in cells separate from other inmates.

Another accused prisoner is Dr Younas Sheikh, a physician and professor who was arrested in Oct 2000 after some of his students said they found some contents of his lectures ''offensive'' against Prophet Muhammad.

A lower court handed down the death sentence in August last year. Sheikh then went to the higher court and for the last 10 months has been waiting for his appeal to be heard.

Lynch law

In a recent letter entitled 'Religious Terrorism through Abuse of the Blasphemy Law' and written from an Islamabad jail, he wrote: "This Pakistani religious lynch law is wide (open) to abuse, through and by the sadist and miscreant mullahs, with violence or its threat, for their political, religious and sectarian repressive purposes on the mere pretext of the undefined concepts of blasphemy in the ambiguous wording of this law."

"On Aug 18, 2001, a learned Islamabad court, while sitting in camera inside the central jail Rawalpindi, due to threats of Islamic terrorism by the marauding mullahs of the Nazi-style religious organisation 'The Aalmi Majlis Khatme-Nabowat Pakistan', succumbed to these threats and sentenced me to death under the Blasphemy Law, without good evidence,'' he said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by IPS .

Sheikh argued that the court actually found no case against him and that ''all the oral and documentary evidence on court record pointed towards my innocence''.

"It was a travesty of justice, a violation of basic human rights, as even my solicitors were harassed with a ' fatwa ' (religious decree) of apostasy against them and they were threatened with the lives of their children, so the due process of law and justice was badly influenced against me in this unfair trial,'' he pointed out.

Repeal the law

He appealed to President Gen Pervez Musharraf to repeal the blasphemy law and release all those accused under it.

Musharraf's government says it has been battling religious extremism. But after swallowing a bitter pill at the hands of religious lobby in April 2000 — when Musharraf announced a procedural change that would require a higher official to investigate a blasphemy complaint before registering a case against an accused — the government is moving with caution.

Still, Religious Affairs Minister Dr Mahmood Ahmed Ghazi, quoting Muslim jurists, said that the death sentence could not be awarded against non-Muslims. His remarks were seen to be attempts to prevent the abuse of law against non-Muslims.

Law Minister Khalid Ranjha appears to be building deterrence against the law's misuse against Muslims as well. He said that in Pakistan, no single person has the right to issue any ' fatwa ' (religious decree) — and that if some crime is committed due to ' fatwa ' issued, then that ' fatwa ' itselfbecomes a crime.

Public perceptions of the blasphemy law are mixed. Law student Farzana Khan said that it is not the blasphemy law that is bad because much more stringent blasphemy laws exist in western countries. But its misuse needs to be prevented, he said.

Then there are those like grocer Muhammad Nazir, who said that blasphemy is a matter of faith. If someone is seen committing an offense against it, that person should be severely punished at once, he added. — IPS