Pakistan: Muslim Mob Lynches Khan-Supporting Cleric for Alleged Blasphemy

Supporters of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan march during a protest in Lahore on October 30
ARIF ALI/AFP via Getty Images
John Hayward

Maulana Nigar Alam, a 40-year-old Muslim cleric and religious scholar, was beaten to death by a Muslim mob on Sunday in the northwestern village of Sawaldher in Pakistan near the Afghan border.

The mob accused Alam of making “blasphemous” comments in a speech he delivered to a rally supporting former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has been making a tumultuous return to power.

Pakistani police quoted by the Times of India (TOI) said they realized Alam was in trouble after the crowd in Sawaldher responded angrily to his speech.

“When we saw that the crowd was about to attack Alam, we escorted him to a shop in a nearby market, but people broke into the shop and started attacking him with punches, kicks, and clubs,” said Rokhanzeb Khan, senior superintendent of police for the Mardan district where Sawaldher is located.

“The mob was so agitated that it became extremely challenging for the police to even recover the body,” said district police chief Najeeb ur-Rehman.

Alam died on the spot from the savage beating, which onlookers recorded on video and uploaded to social media. 

Warning – Graphic Images:

Although Western media mostly identified Alam as simply a “man,” a “person” or a “demonstrator,” sources such as Al Jazeera News, ANI News, and India’s WION News confirmed he was in fact a Muslim religious leader and scholar of Islam, and he was an invited speaker at the Imran Khan rally.

As for what Alam said that got him beaten to death by an angry mob, most media outlets studiously avoided quoting him.

“Some words of his prayer were deemed blasphemous by a number of protestors, leading to torture and death at the hands of the angry mob,” a local police officer told the Associated Press (AP).

WION News cited a self-described “ex-Muslim atheist activist” named Harris Sultan who said Alam’s offense was telling the crowd, “I love Imran Khan like I love prophets.”

“A seemingly harmless comment in Pakistan can get you killed. Soon, nobody will mention Muhammad or any prophet out of fear of getting misinterpreted as a ‘blasphemer,’” Sultan said.

ANI News similarly quoted Alam as saying, “Imran Khan is a truthful person, and I respect him like the Prophet.”

Another video making the rounds of Pakistani social media purportedly shows Alam making a rather more convoluted statement praising a local leader named Nazim Saeed, not Imran Khan. In this account, Alam essentially says: “I’m not comparing this guy to the Prophet Mohammed, but when you think about it, he is a lot like the Prophet Mohammed.”

One of the other speakers at the rally can be seen trying to silence Alam, having realized the cleric was badly misreading the tolerance of his audience for Mohammed metaphors:

Radio Free Europe (RFE) cited unconfirmed local reports that said Alam “referred to a political candidate being as ‘pious as the Prophet,’” but not which one.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.