A new day for Pakistan? The Aasia Bibi Verdict

A strange thing has happened in the land of the pure, the bastion of Islam that is Pakistan. A woman imprisoned for almost nine years and who was on death row for blasphemy has been acquitted by the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

The reason I call this strange, is that in Pakistan it is. The country’s infamous blasphemy laws are used willy-nilly to settle personal scores and it is very difficult to be absolved of this ridiculous crime. Plenty of people are languishing in jail because they had supposedly “blasphemed” against Islam, its Prophet or the Qur’an. In fact, Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab, was murdered for trying to get Aasia Bibi’s acquittal. And it is Aasia who has been acquitted today.

This is no doubt a landmark ruling, not least because there was absolutely no evidence against Aasia Bibi, but also because it shows that even though the case against her was entirely fabricated she still had to languish in jail for almost a decade before getting justice. Judges would recuse themselves from her case and lawyers were unwilling to represent her.

This is how hard it is to get out of the blasphemy trap in Pakistan. Her acquittal at least gives a little hope that others might get justice too. Much has to be said about her current lawyer Saiful Malook, who argued her case successfully in the supreme court…