PAKISTAN: The ransacked university hostel room of slain Pakistani student Mashal Khan has posters of Karl Marx and Che Guevara still hanging on the walls, along with scribbled quotes including one that reads: “Be curious, crazy and mad.”
The day before, a heated debate over religion with fellow students broke out at the dorm and led to people accusing Khan of blasphemy against Islam. That attracted a crowd that grew to several hundred people, according to witnesses.
The mob kicked in the door, dragged Khan from his room and beat him to death, witnesses and police said.
The death in the northwestern city of Mardan is the latest violence linked to accusations of blasphemy in Pakistan.
Those who knew Khan described him as an intellectually curious student who openly professed devotion to Islam but asked many questions.
“Whatever he had to say, he would say it openly, but he didn’t understand the environment he was living in,” said one of Khan’s teachers at Abdul Wali Khan University, who declined to be named for fear of retribution.
Aziz ur Rehman, a caretaker at the hostel who witnessed Khan’s debate with his fellow students, said he brought up arcane subjects such as whether the offspring of Adam and Eve — the original humans in Islamic texts as well as Judeo-Christian ones — would have married each other, raising the issue of incest.
Crimes related to blasphemy are a serious offense in Muslim-majority Pakistan, and penalties range from small fines to the death sentence.
At least 65 people have been murdered over blasphemy allegations since 1990, according to figures from a Center for Research and Security Studies report and local media, and dozens more convicted of the crime are currently on death row in Pakistani jails.
The Pakistani government has yet to comment publicly on Khan’s killing.
In March, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif issued an order for the removal of blasphemous content online, and said anyone who posted such content should face “strict punishment under the law.”
Police say they have arrested 20 suspects involved in Khan’s murder and have found no evidence to substantiate blasphemy allegations.
IMAM REFUSES LAST RIGHTS
Rehman, the caretaker, said Khan was alive when the police arrived, but that they did not approach the hostel until it was too late.
“They could have easily saved his life but they stood away from the mob ... I heard one officer say it’s good that they sent this non-believer to hell,” he said.
Mardan police chief Mohammad Alam Shinwari denied the allegation that officers did not do enough to save Khan.
“When we entered the campus, he had already been killed and the mob was trying to burn his body,” he said.
In Khan’s home town of Swabi, around 60 km south of Mardan, his father, Iqbal Shaer, said the accusations of blasphemy were unfounded. “First they killed my son and now they are adding salt to our wounds,” he told Reuters.
Shaer, who runs a small business selling biscuits and chocolates to local retailers, said he had always been a lover of poetry and literature and encouraged his children to express themselves and appreciate the arts.
He added: “My wife told me this morning that she spent her life taking care of her son, but those who killed him have wasted that long struggle.”
At Khan’s funeral, the imam at the local mosque refused to read the last rights, according to Swabi resident Salman Ahmed. A technician who was asked to do so in the cleric’s place was confronted by several people afterwards.
Khan has since been buried.
Dorm debate led to death in Pakistan ‘blasphemy killing’
Dorm debate led to death in Pakistan ‘blasphemy killing’
US congresswoman supports censure of colleague over comments against Arabs, Muslims
- Republican Randy Fine ‘spreading hate,’ Democrat Robin Kelly tells Arab News
- ‘Members of Congress should not be targeting Muslims for political gain’
CHICAGO: Illinois Congresswoman Robin Kelly has said she supports calls in the US House to censure Florida Congressman Randy Fine, who has repeatedly made derogatory comments about Muslims and Arabs on his official social media accounts.
Kelly, a Democrat, denounced anti-Muslim and anti-Arab statements made by Fine, a Republican, saying she expects a censure resolution to be put together by House members possibly next week.
“There’s just no room for hate. That’s just the bottom line. I’ve seen hate. It causes people to lose their lives. It causes people to not have the same opportunities as other people. It causes people to have extra stress, extra trauma. And to categorize a whole group of people is so unfair,” Kelly told Arab News.
“I come from a family with a lot of different ethnicities or cultures, and I’ve seen the damage that hate has done in categorizing any one community.
“The Islamic community is just always presented as the bad guy in the movies and on TV … Being a person of color and seeing things that even my own family have gone through, I’m just very sensitive to it.”
Last month, when a supporter of New York’s Muslim Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on social media that dogs have no place in a Muslim home, Fine wrote: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
Then on Feb. 20, Fine introduced to Congress the “Protecting Puppies from Sharia Act,” cosponsored by nine Republicans.
Fine has been criticized in the past for making Islamophobic and anti-Arab comments on his social medial pages.
Last May, when Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib said it was “a crime to use starvation as a weapon in Gaza,” Fine responded: “Tell your fellow Muslim terrorists to release the hostages and surrender. Until then, #StarveAway.”
During his election campaign in December 2023, in response to an anonymous poster on X who criticized delays in getting food trucks into Gaza, Fine wrote: “Stop the trucks. Let them eat rockets. There are plenty of those. #Bombsaway.”
Before running for Congress, responding to a New York Times report and photo of 67 Arab children killed by Israel, he said: “Thanks for the pic.”
Muslim groups in Florida have been complaining about Fine’s rhetoric since 2021, including after he sent a private Instagram message to a Florida Muslim saying: “Go blow yourself up!”
Kelly said she is also disturbed by the comments of Fine’s allies, citing them as a broader undercurrent of Islamophobia rising in the US.
She insisted that Islamophobia is no different than antisemitism or racism against other groups, including African Americans like herself.
Fine and Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles “are spreading hate and should be censured,” Kelly wrote on her own Facebook page this past week.
“Our country is already divided enough, members of Congress should not be targeting Muslims for political gain.”
Ogles, a cosponsor of the “Protecting Puppies from Sharia Act,” declared: “Muslims don’t belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie.”
Kelly, who was elected to Congress in 2013, said: “I think they should all be censured. I say to people that feel the Islamophobia, ‘Don’t get weary, don’t get lost in the chaos. That’s what they want you to do. You can’t go in your house and close the door. You have to be a voice. You can’t stay on the sidelines because this isn’t acceptable.’”
Arab News reached out to Fine for comment.
