Opening Remarks — Mustafa Akyol

Hello, and thanks for joining us for this Cato Institute book forum. My name is Mustafa Akyol, and I’m a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, where I focus on Islam, modernity, and public policy. Today, I’m very pleased to welcome you to this online discussion on blasphemy laws in the Muslim world — in particular Pakistan, but not limited to Pakistan — with two distinguished scholars whom we are honored to host today, and I’ll introduce them in a moment.

But first, why is this issue important? Because it relates to freedom of speech, which is a pillar of liberal democracy, human freedom, and human flourishing. Yet free speech is being challenged today in many parts of the world, including the West, by various ideological, cultural, and political forces that want to control society by silencing dissent, by silencing those who think differently from them.

When we look at the religious sphere, which is my area of focus, we see that religions have sometimes become advocates of free speech in history, especially in their early phases, because new religious movements emerge often with radically new ideas — blasphemous ideas — that are fiercely opposed by the existing establishment. We see this clearly in the early phases of Christianity and Islam, whose first believers were viciously targeted, killed, and tortured for simply speaking out against the pagan gods.

However, once religions themselves become the establishment, sometimes they start to control societies, and that’s how I believe blasphemy laws emerge — both in medieval Christianity and medieval Islam. And today, in the Muslim world, not all Muslim-majority countries, but some of them, have harsh blasphemy laws that target people for saying anything disrespectful to religion, with even the death penalty or sometimes heavy prison sentences. And the most severe cases in the past several years, if not decades, have come from Pakistan.

That’s why today we will discuss this issue with two distinguished scholars from Pakistan. The first is Dr. Muhammad Khalid Masud, a prominent scholar of Islamic law and theology. For decades, he has taught Islamic law not just in Pakistan, but in leading Western universities, including in France, Malaysia, the Netherlands, and Nigeria. He also served for years as the chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology of Pakistan. His many publications include the 2021 edited volume, Freedom of Expression in Islam: Challenging Apostasy and Blasphemy Laws.

We are also delighted to welcome Husnul Amin, the director of the National Institute of Pakistan Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. He has pursued academic studies in Europe and here in the United States as well. His books include Observing Variants of Post-Islamism and An Islamic Case for Religious Freedom.

I should say that I had the privilege of working with both scholars — Drs. Masud and Amin — for an edited book that we published at the Cato Institute a few months ago, last February, titled No Compulsion in Religion, No Exceptions: Islamic Arguments for Religious Freedom. The book includes a chapter on this very issue titled “Compulsion and Speech: Blasphemy Laws in Pakistan and Beyond,” which is also the title of this event. That chapter was penned by Dr. Husnul Amin, and I would welcome everyone to read it. Thanks to the support of Templeton Religion Trust, the Cato Institute also offers the book freely as a downloadable, open-access PDF. Dr. Masud was the academic advisor to our volume, and his contributions were really crucial.

Before getting into the discussion, I should say you can submit your questions via the webpage, Facebook, YouTube, and X during this panel, and we will try to get to them during the conversation.

So, let me begin the conversation. Welcome, Dr. Amin. Welcome, Dr. Masud. It’s a pleasure to have you.

Discussion with Dr. Husnul Amin

Mustafa Akyol: Husnul, you’re my good friend. Thank you for joining us from all the way from Islamabad tonight — as is Dr. Masud. I think you are both very close to each other in Islamabad?

Husnul Amin: Yeah, very close.

Mustafa Akyol: Through you, I would like to extend my salaams and regards to everyone in Pakistan. I have many friends there — we have common friends. Also, since you’re both in Pakistan, let me add a note of current relevance. I’m glad to see the peacemaking role that Pakistan has on the international stage these days, trying to mediate between the United States and Iran and trying to find a solution to the concerning conflict in the Gulf. We need more peace in the world, and especially in that part of the world. Any peace effort is welcome.

But we will discuss Pakistan’s domestic peace here in this conversation, which is also important for any country. And this blasphemy issue, for anyone who has followed it over the decades, has long been a problem that has actually harmed Pakistan’s domestic peace and created many victims, and also socially brought a lot of tension and conflict.

In your chapter in our edited book, you begin by telling one of those incidents in Pakistan — one where blasphemy laws were not just applied by the government, by the courts, by the police, but also through vigilante violence — and that’s actually a big part of the problem. You tell the story of a Pakistani student, Mashal Khan, who was studying at his university and was killed on his campus by people who believed he had blasphemed. Can you tell us about that particular event — what you understand from it — and the broader picture of blasphemy in Pakistan?

Husnul Amin: First of all, thank you, Mustafa, for having me on this podcast, and thank you to the Templeton Institute as well as the Cato Institute for funding this project and for encouraging us to write on these very sensitive issues.

Let me begin with Mashal Khan, as I started my chapter with his story. Mashal Khan was a 23-year-old journalism and media studies student at the university. He was known for his left-leaning Marxist views, which he would share on Facebook very often, very frequently. Opposition to Mashal Khan started accumulating against him — people would come and criticize him, talk to him, and sometimes use abusive language toward him. But actually, it was not just the so-called “blasphemous” content for which he was known. It was also his staunch criticism of the university administration on various campus issues, as well as his political views. So these three things — his religious thought, his left-leaning Marxist views, and his contestation with the university administration — all brought him to this very sensitive situation.

What happened on campus in 2017 is that students, administrators, and outsiders — and be mindful that they were not religious students, not madrasa students like the Taliban, but regular university students, some from science departments, some from social sciences, some teachers, some administrators — they all went to the hostel, grabbed him, dragged him through the corridors, and then shot him to death. Even before he died, there was a huge and very painful lynching that was carried out. He was killed by a bullet shot, and then he was lynched again.

Three things I would like to mention from my fieldwork on Mashal Khan. First, mob justice was carried out with no legal due process pursued, neither by the university. When the situation was ripe for such a thing, it was the responsibility of the university administration as well to take care of it. Based on other examples from Pakistan, I can demonstrate how proactive, timely action by the state or state institutions can actually save precious lives.

Second was the weaponization of blasphemy law. People — students, everyone — felt that they would be supported by the law even if they acted outside of due process, that after lynching someone, there would be a legal force standing behind them in court. The investigation later proved that Mashal Khan had not actually committed any blasphemy; his views were considered problematic by some corners, specifically his Marxist views. So that was the second thing — the weaponization of the law.

And the state remained totally silent. State institutions, the police, everyone who belonged to the state did not act proactively to safeguard and protect Mashal Khan from these incidents. That was my main finding.

Mustafa Akyol: I mean, people’s views may be problematic. Marxist views are really problematic for me too, but I criticize them — I don’t target people for them physically or through government power, which is a whole different thing. And as you noted in your chapter, this is just one case. If I understand correctly, there have been more than two thousand seven hundred cases recorded in Pakistan of people accused of blasphemy — sometimes mob violence, but most of the time also legal processes that put them in jail. And the targets could be secular people critical of religion, Christians, minorities like Ahmadis, or other groups — but also Muslims themselves, including conservative Sunni Muslims, can be targeted sometimes by blasphemy laws.

There was also a recent case — I heard about it from you a few days ago — of a YouTube figure, a conservative Islamic personality, Engineer Muhammad Ali Mirza, who has three million followers. He was an Islamic scholar who was arrested or targeted for committing blasphemy. How could that happen? Let me ask you, Husnul, and then I’d like to hear Dr. Masud’s thoughts as well.

Husnul Amin: I was just trying to bring this in sharp contrast to Mashal Khan, who was secular, Marxist, and left-leaning. This Ali Mirza is a religious scholar — he is also an engineer. Some madrasa graduates may not consider him a traditionalist scholar, but he is well-versed in Arabic, Quranic studies, and Hadith studies. He is very popular on social media, with more than three million followers.

Dr. Masud on the Historical Roots of Blasphemy Law

Mustafa Akyol: Now, Dr. Masud, in your work on Islamic law, you trace the historical and colonial roots of blasphemy laws in the Muslim world. Could you take us through that history?

Muhammad Khalid Masud: The term “blasphemy” does not actually appear in the pre-colonial period of Islamic legal discussion. Blasphemy, as a term, was originally defined as speech against sacred text — against God — and was limited to that. When the colonial period came, it arrived after another development in the Muslim world — the 12th and 13th centuries, the Crusaders, the Mongols, and so on. There is a very interesting development: when the Mongols destroyed the Caliphate in Baghdad, they eventually accepted Islam, but some of them accepted Shiite Islam. That is where some scholars in the Muslim world began differentiating more sharply between Shiites and Sunnis. The discussion about blasphemy — specifically the concept of Sabb al-Nabi, insulting the prophet — comes in through that period.

Mustafa Akyol: And to go back to the very beginnings of Islam — the time of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and his companions. In Mecca, Muslims were preaching Islam. What they were saying — that the idols were false gods, that there is only one God, the God of Abraham — was blasphemous to the pagans. So the pagans were offended by what was said, and that’s why they started torturing Muslims, going after them, boycotting them, even trying to assassinate the Prophet.

And the Quran advised patience to Muslims against the verbal attacks from the other side. This attitude did not necessarily fully change even in Medina, because as we have in the book, there are cases of verbal insults thrown at the Prophet in Medina, and the Quran’s response is again mild — patience and restraint. The most interesting verse in the Quran about blasphemy, which I’ve written a lot on, says to Muslims in a Medinan verse: “When you see a group of people mocking God’s verses, do not sit with them.” So you simply walk away. In Medina, Muslims had power — they had swords, they were not weak — and yet the Quran’s response to people mocking or joking about the Quran is not to silence them, beat them, or lynch them. It says, “Just do not engage with those people.” I think that attitude can definitely guide Muslim attitudes today.

The 1986 Turning Point in Pakistan

Mustafa Akyol: Now, in Pakistan, records show that from 1986 to 2025, there were more than two thousand seven hundred cases of blasphemy. Pakistan was founded in 1947, and something happened in 1986 that made this problem much more acute. Before 1986, there were very few cases. Husnul, what happened?

Husnul Amin: Pakistan came into being in 1947, and the first blasphemy law was actually enacted during the colonial period in 1860, with some revisions in 1927. The colonial elites kept the writing sphere and public speech largely outside the domain of the blasphemy law; it was essentially a secular law for maintaining public order.

In 1986, three things happened. First, there was a top-down Islamization project by the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq. He introduced key amendments and added the death penalty. The 1860 law — which had been a secular law for maintaining public order — was transformed into a sacred religious law. That sacredness was attached to it; what had been a civil penalty of perhaps a few years in jail became potentially the death penalty.

Second, there was a sociological effect. Society internalized the logic that it was now backed by a sacred law that would protect those who acted against blasphemers. Whatever people did, they felt there would be a law standing behind them. This internalization created a huge sense of security for people to carry out mob justice and lynchings.

The third factor was the Afghan war and jihad. It created new factions in society, new power groups, which strengthened not only the legal process but also the sociological process.

And then there is social media. If you plot blasphemy-related incidents on a timeline, there is a huge spike between 1986 and 2026. There are now more than three thousand cases, with some in courts, some people imprisoned, and some who have been lynched and killed. The Mashal Khan incident in my own village in Mardan is an example: a text message was sent on WhatsApp, and within seconds it spread to nearby villages. Quick transportation and social media accelerated the process of mob justice dramatically.

Ibn Taymiyyah’s Influence on Blasphemy Law

Mustafa Akyol: Dr. Masud, you have studied how the views of Ibn Taymiyyah — the medieval Islamic scholar from the time of the Mongols — have influenced blasphemy jurisprudence, particularly through his treatise Al-Sārim al-Maslūl ʿalā Shātim al-Rasūl, which means “The Sharp Sword Drawn Against Those Who Insult the Messenger.” He takes a very hard-line view — he argues that no repentance should be accepted from someone who has insulted the Prophet. He also, interestingly, takes Quranic verses about God punishing blasphemers in the afterlife and derives from them capital punishment in this world. Could we not read those verses the other way — that since God says He will punish people for their theological errors in the afterlife, that is not our job in this world, and we should leave it to the afterlife?

Muhammad Khalid Masud: To understand Ibn Taymiyyah’s book, we should remember that he wrote it because he himself was accused of blasphemy. In his days, there was a Christian named Assaf who was a secretary to the governor. He was accused of blasphemy, and scholars including Ibn Taymiyyah came out into the streets demanding a death sentence. The governor called them to his office, discussed with them, and it was proven that Assaf had not said anything blasphemous. Ibn Taymiyyah and one other were detained and put in prison. Ibn Taymiyyah wrote this book in prison to defend his position.

What happened to Assaf? He converted to Islam, went to perform the Hajj, and one of the people from the crowd that had gathered against him followed him and killed him after his Hajj, in Medina.

Ibn Taymiyyah’s argument was that a non-Muslim who insults the Prophet — even if he repents, even if he accepts Islam — should still be given the death sentence. He wrote this book arguing that there was a scholarly consensus on this. But we have Ibn Abidin, who later went into detailed analysis of Ibn Taymiyyah’s Sarim al-Maslul, and showed that the Hanafi books that had taken more moderate positions had their views changed, and that these tempered positions were later presented as a scholarly consensus — which they were not.

The earlier Hanafi position was very clear: even in the case of apostasy, a person should be asked, even compelled, to seek repentance. But Ibn Taymiyyah picked up certain sources and argued that there was consensus against allowing repentance. Ibn Abidin later showed in detail how those sources had been misrepresented. Critical studies of this tradition have continued in the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries — in India, Pakistan, Egypt, and elsewhere — with a number of scholars criticizing Ibn Taymiyyah’s view and restoring the Hanafi positions.

Mustafa Akyol: So these hard-line blasphemy laws in medieval Islam were very much shaped by the imperial context of the time — the Mongol invasions, the Crusades, the weakening of the caliphate — and the arguments of Ibn Taymiyyah were fundamentally political, about asserting the authority of the sultan and the ulama. And of course, Christian empires of the same period were doing the same, if not worse. Medieval European blasphemy laws and the Byzantine Empire had similar frameworks.

And as scholar Abdullah Sa’id has noted — he has a chapter on apostasy in our book No Compulsion in Religion — “There is no strong textual basis for the death penalty for blasphemy, either in the Quran or the traditions of the Prophet, and thus contemporary Muslims should be free to rethink the concept of blasphemy in the light of their own circumstances.” Our circumstances show that these blasphemy laws lead to a lot of injustice, violence, and false accusations. And if the purpose of blasphemy laws is to make people respect Islam, it doesn’t work that way in the modern era — especially in the West, where it feeds into Islamophobia and sometimes provokes more disrespect to the Prophet or scripture. There is wisdom in returning to the magnanimity of the Quran, where Muslims are simply patient and walk away from offensive words.

Questions from the Audience

Mustafa Akyol: Now I want to turn to questions from the audience. Iftikhar Ahmed asks about Pakistan’s anti-Ahmadi ordinance and Section 295‑C of the Pakistani Penal Code, and how these provisions fit within the broader framework of blasphemy laws. What do reformist Islamic arguments against such laws suggest about their impact on religious freedom for Ahmadis?

Muhammad Khalid Masud: We have to look at the historical context. The movement against the Ahmadis was started by the Ahrar, and it was a movement that demanded that Ahmadis be declared a non-Muslim minority. They were campaigning against figures like Zafarullah Khan on those grounds. The demand was that if they are declared non-Muslim, then as non-Muslims they should have the basic rights of a non-Muslim. But in Pakistan and other Muslim countries, this problem exists not only with Ahmadis but also with other non-Muslims. Non-Muslims, according to classical fiqh, are under a political contract with the Muslim state and should be under its protection. Now is the time that we should consider all non-Muslim Pakistanis — including Ahmadis — to have freedom of religion.

Husnul Amin: From a political science perspective, the whole framework of Muslim majority versus non-Muslim minority needs to be revisited. We need to think about citizenship in a modern nation-state and what rights all citizens have — whether Muslim, non-Muslim, Ahmadi, or whoever they may be. I recently came across a discussion about Maulana Maududi, the mainstream Islamist ideologue, who said somewhere that he was politically dragged into the anti-Ahmadi discussion because the society had already internalized it, and it was not possible for him to keep himself isolated from the discussion. There was a political opportunity in these things.

Mustafa Akyol: All I would add is that who is a true Muslim and who is outside the faith — these are theological questions, and Muslims can agree and disagree on that. Ahmadis consider themselves Muslims. For mainstream Muslims, including myself, they hold beliefs that are not acceptable — they believe in an additional prophet. But whatever they believe, I think they deserve human rights and equal citizenship rights. That should be the main approach. An analogy: in the United States when Mormonism appeared in the 19th century, many Christians considered them heretics outside of Christianity, and there were some episodes of persecution. The better solution is to disagree theologically, but secure everybody’s religious freedom, freedom of expression, and human rights, so we can all live in peace.

Mustafa Akyol: A question from Sohaib Khalig: “From a political sociology perspective, how can reformist intellectuals like us realistically counter the deeply entrenched vigilante culture and populist street power dynamics surrounding blasphemy laws?”

Husnul Amin: There is a theological and intellectual argument around the whole blasphemy issue that needs to be debunked. Society needs to respond proactively, and religious movements specifically have a responsibility to ensure that peace prevails. If there is a case they interpret as blasphemy, there should be a due legal process that is pursued. We need education — in schools, madrasas, mosques — so that students and communities learn how to engage with difference and defiance in society. There is a responsibility on all stakeholders and societal forces to keep these things in front of them.

Mustafa Akyol: A question from Oren Zeb Hanif: “Why can’t or why doesn’t the Council of Islamic Ideology of Pakistan attempt to bring the current blasphemy laws in congruence with the Hanafi or general Islamic legal tradition?” — which would be a milder direction compared to the Ibn Taymiyyah direction that has been taken.

Muhammad Khalid Masud: This is first of all a constitutional issue. The constitution should have a provision for freedom of religion and freedom of expression. Secondly, the Council’s role is to review existing laws, so they already have a duty to look at this. But it depends on which political era the Council is working in — there are pressures from outside on the Council as well. I don’t think the Council at this time will look at revisions to the more extreme interpretations influenced by Ibn Taymiyyah in Pakistan.

Husnul Amin: Scholars like Professor Mushtaq Ahmad and Ammar Khan Nasir both actually originate from the Deobandi Hanafi Sunni tradition. Mushtaq specifically has created a lot of new knowledge using this Hanafi framework. Even within the Hanafi Sunni Deobandi tradition, he and Ammar Khan Nasir have produced new ideas and alternative interpretations of the law that could support new legislation as well.

Mustafa Akyol: In the Muslim world over the past half century or so, there has been a tendency in some circles that the more hard-line an opinion you can find in the tradition, the better Muslim you are. I think the blasphemy laws were made more severe as a consequence of that. But quite the contrary, there are more moderate views that we can find — and indeed, Husnul, you mentioned them in your chapter.

Muhammad Khalid Masud: I think we should also take into consideration that there is actually a body of critical scholarship — I would say thirty or forty very serious research works have been published in Pakistan, and in Egypt and other countries as well. It’s not that critical studies are not continuing. The problem is the political environment, which is not supporting those critical studies.

Mustafa Akyol: A final question from Joanne Cummings: “What is the relationship between blasphemy laws and Takfiri thought?” Takfir, of course, is the act of declaring other Muslims to be infidels — this was the way of al-Qaeda, ISIS, and similar movements.

Mustafa Akyol: I think there is a connection. Blasphemy and apostasy are two concepts used to say: “You claim to be a Muslim, but actually you said or did something that puts you outside of Islam, and therefore I can target you” — through the laws of the state, through vigilante violence, or through terrorism.

Muhammad Khalid Masud: The whole idea of the hadd punishment for blasphemy is based on this Takfir logic. There is no punishment for the blasphemer as such, but there is a punishment for Takfir. You first have to declare the person an apostate and then punish them for that.

Mustafa Akyol: I think the bottom line is: if we can agree to disagree, if we can acknowledge that there are different views of Islam, some of which we find wrong or even heretical, but still recognize that we are fellow human beings, neighbors, and citizens — can we live in peace? That should be the basic approach. It’s not that we all agree on things. Christian history is instructive in that sense: Christians killed each other for centuries over sect and blasphemy, and then they learned the lesson. There’s a point there for reflection.

Closing Remarks — Mustafa Akyol

There are more questions, but I apologize to the people who sent them — we cannot get to them all. I’ll be happy to write back to those who send questions by email. Thank you, Dr. Husnul Amin, and thank you, Dr. Masud, for joining us — and for joining our project, for the beautiful work you’ve done with your chapter, Husnul, and for your editing contributions, Dr. Masud. Thank you for joining us at this Cato Institute panel.

Our project is called No Compulsion in Religion. You can follow it at the Cato Institute and get all the updates there. You can download our book, No Compulsion in Religion: No Exceptions: Islamic Arguments for Religious Freedom, from the Cato Institute website. Thank you for joining us today.

Dr. Amin and Dr. Masud: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.