Man Who Claimed To Be A Prophet In 2020 & The Absence Of A Functioning Shariat Court
Tahir Naseem was a Pakistani-American citizen who claimed to be a Prophet in this era and was shot dead on 29th of July, 2020 in Peshawar court-room by an individual Pakistani resident, named Ghazi Khalid.
This incident of Tahir Naseem being killed has divided the population, as some being outraged and others considering the killing as a ‘Heroic’ act.
Those outraged, are now blaming every Muslim of Pakistan and arguing that religious intolerance is on the rise and Islamic fanatics are indoctrinating extremism within the religious community which should be a serious concern for every Pakistani against these so-called Mullahs.
Many liberal Muslims even question the religion itself and falsely accuse the Muslims by saying that ‘In order to be a hero in Islam, just kill someone who disbelieves’, — spreading further hatred among each other.
The Root Cause
Two of the most serious problem in Pakistan is generalization, where we generalize some individuals unlawful actions and blame it on the whole community and whole religion. Second, we only get outraged on what is apparent, ignoring the root cause. It is first needed to understand what was the cause that made this particular individual, Ghazi Khalid, commit the act of killing a false self-proclaimed prophet.
The main reason is the absence of a pragmatic Shariah law in our conventional judiciary system that claims itself to be an ‘Islamic Republic’, but does not judge or enforce any laws according to the Islamic Shariah. In other words, this whole incident happened because there is an absence of an actual functioning Shariat court that actually makes decisions and takes actions according to the Islamic laws. The Shariat court or any other Islamic legislative authorities in Pakistan are most likely of no use and only exist for a show, for the sake of being an Islamic republic by name. The Parliament and the Supreme Court has the ultimate power to make the final decision and can overrule the Shariat court and even reject their appeal.
Since the introduction of Shariat court in 1980's till today, there has been no execution(according to Shariah penal law) or any punishment of death by the judiciary(supreme court) in over 40 years, and over the course of 20 years, there had been 647 Blasphemy cases in Pakistan, which resulted in only imprisonment without much proper hearing, and by then, everyone forgets. Even if we talk about acts like rape or gang rape, the situation is the same.
The punishments according to the Islamic Shariah is very much present in Pakistan’s constitution, but are very rarely practiced by the legal judiciary. This is the exact reason why this so-called ‘extremism’ is on the rise. When the official judiciary doesn’t take strict actions according to the Shariah and does not provide justice, then individual citizens who has little to no knowledge about Islamic laws, will take matters into their own hands and make it much worse.
There have been many cases where individuals have wrongly accused their family members and stoned them to death, only on the basis of speculation, suspicion, and in the name of honor, which is ignorance and a huge sin in Islam. Since the official body of Shariah law is not involved to make judgments, then people with no knowledge of shariah, take legal matters into their own hands personally, causing a really wrong image to go out in the world. As a result, the whole country is labeled as extremist, just by the actions of few and no active presence of an official legal legislative authority, which represents the true Shariah.
The case of Tahir Naseem, who claimed to be a prophet in 2020, was on-going since 2018 without any end results for 2 full years. Someone might even ask why it took 2 years and yet no decisions were made and why wasn’t the Shariat court involved? Because of these reasons, 20 blasphemous people have been killed by individual residents in the past, due to blasphemy or similar cases. These were individuals who took the law in their own hands since the judiciary might not have taken proper actions or decisions. Even if the judiciary does take any actions, none of the population will be aware to witness the severe consequences and learn a lesson not to repeat such crimes. This brings a wrong perception in people, where we start to judge the actions of a believer and think what he/she has done is the actual Islam, which should not be the case.
