Younus Shaikh - Alleged Blasphemy

Alleged Blasphemy

Shaikh's blasphemy was alleged to have occurred at a lecture he allegedly gave on 2 October 2000 at Capital Medical College. The accusation was that, during the lecture, Shaikh said that Muhammad did not become a Muslim until the age of 40 (the age at which he apparently received the first message from God), and also that his's parents were non-Muslims because they died before Islam existed, and furthermore that he wed, at 25, without an Islamic marriage contract, and that he was unlikely to have been circumcised or to have shaved under his armpits or to have shaved his pubic hair, because those practices were unknown to his tribe.

Shaikh denied that this lecture even took place, and denied that he had said what was alleged. In a letter to Babu Gogineni of the IHEU, Shaikh offered an explanation of why a charge was made against him; he claimed (albeit without corroborating evidence against the people he accused):

1. On 1 October 2000 I attended a meeting of South Asian Union addressed by an (alleged) ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) Brig. Shaukat Qadir (retd.) also (allegedly) running a religious-political association of Jamait – I – Islami. I asked a couple of questions about South Asian peace and Kashmir which offended him and he returned a threat ("Rebuttal"). There were foreign office policy makers and newsmen sitting there.

2. Within 48 hours, a foreign office employee who was also my student at the medical college where I used to lecture at the morning time, prepared an application against me, alleging blasphemous remarks in their class and gave it to a cleric, who improving upon the complaint, accused me of a specific instance of 2-10-2000 in the class of IInd year male students and registered the case with the Police.

According to press reports, eleven students, all the students in Shaikh's class, signed a letter attesting to Shaikh's blasphemy. The cleric who received the letter was a member of an organisation known to harass and to attack non-orthodox Muslims. The reports call the organisation Aalmi Majlis Tahaffuz Khatm-e-Nubuwwat, which the press translates as the Committee for the Protection of the Finality of the Prophethood, or the Movement for the Finality of the Prophet, or the Organisation of the Finality of the Prophet. Pakistan said that Shaikh's accuser was the head of Majlis-e-Khatam-e-Nabuwwat. That organisation dispatched a mob to the medical school and to the police station, and threatened to burn them down if action was not urgently taken against Shaikh. Capital Homeopathic College, without explanation, suspended Shaikh on 3 October 2000.