blasphemy laws

Provisions would criminalize not just proselytization but also apostasy or renunciation of religious belief.

A university lecturer has been sentenced to death in Pakistan for blaspheming against Islam, drawing international attention to a verdict that independent United Nations human rights monitors have criticized as a “travesty of justice.”

For nearly a decade “Free Asia Bibi” has been the rallying cry of human rights activists around the world protesting anti-religious extremism in Pakistan. Her case was finally heard by the Supreme Court in October 2018, where she was acquitted for lack of evidence.

A special report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom focuses on anti-conversion laws in South Asia.

Mohammad Mansha (58) is a happy man today. The Punjab resident is home after serving the last nine years in prison on a life sentence blasphemy conviction on a charge that Mansha had desecrated a copy of the Quran. In late December 2017, a two-judge panel ruled that Mansha was falsely accused.

According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), more than one-third of the world’s countries criminalize blasphemy—speaking ill of things sacred to indigenous religions. In some countries, blasphemy carries a death sentence.