How online chats are leading to imprisonment for blasphemy in Pakistan

Rawalpindi, Pakistan: It is to many Pakistanis an unspeakable crime, so much so that evidence is not always required to secure a conviction. Violent rallies spring up at just rumors that it has happened. Vigilantes have hunted down the accused, and they are praised as heroes for doing it.

The crime is blaspheming Islam, and in Pakistan, it can carry a death sentence, although the country has not executed anyone for it.

But identifying what constitutes blasphemy can be nearly impossible in a society that represses conversation on the topic, outside of outright condemnation. Accusations of blasphemy have at times incited murderous mobs. Politicians and lawyers who challenged the blasphemy laws have been killed.

In 2023, Pakistan made punishments more severe for violations of its blasphemy laws, early versions of which were introduced under British rule. Arrests have since skyrocketed — from a few dozen per year to hundreds — especially on charges of blaspheming Islam on the internet.

Many of the accused say they were entrapped by bad actors online who sought to extort them or to inflate the number of blasphemy arrests. Human rights experts say that pointing to a rising tide of blasphemy — manufactured or not — is a sure way for Islamist groups to drum up public support and to attract funding under the pretext of defending religious sanctity.

Interviews with families of the accused, legal experts, rights advocates and some officials, as well as reviews of government reports, suggest a pattern of abuse. They say strict blasphemy laws are being misused to target vulnerable people.

Shahida Bibi, who lives in the capital, Islamabad, was finishing her prayers one night in 2023 when four men knocked on her door. At first, they claimed to be friends of her son’s, but their questioning made her nervous.

After some wrangling, Bibi said, one finally admitted the truth: They were officers of the Federal Investigation Agency, then Pakistan’s primary authority for cybercrime investigations, and her son had just been arrested on charges of online blasphemy.

“I felt as if the ground had slipped from beneath my feet,” Bibi said in a recent interview, her voice trembling.

Her son’s account of what happened, which he later recounted to her from behind bars, matches a pattern that human rights experts say has become common.

It begins with a seemingly benign online conversation.

In the case of Bibi’s son, it was on one of several WhatsApp groups for job seekers he had joined. A woman had messaged him privately, Bibi said, offering what appeared to be a promising opportunity.

“She was kind and spoke to me regularly,” Bibi recalled her son telling her.

Then something strange happened. During their otherwise professional conversation, the woman sent him a sexually explicit image superimposed with Islamic scripture. Disturbed, he questioned her. The woman brushed it off as a mistake and claimed she was unsure what she had sent. She insisted that he forward a copy of the message so she could verify it.

Bibi’s son was suspicious, he later told his mother, but he needed a job, and this was the best lead he had found. Hesitantly, he complied with the woman’s request.

A few days later, the woman invited him to meet her near a bus stop, promising to take him to an employer’s office, Bibi said. Instead, four men were waiting for him. They beat him, seized his phone and took him into custody.

That single forwarded image, Bibi said, had become the basis for a blasphemy charge.

Bibi’s account could not be independently verified, as evidence has not been made public in her son’s case and the judicial system in Pakistan affords little transparency. Government officials declined to comment on the case, citing the sensitive nature of discourse on blasphemy.

But The New York Times reviewed court documents containing transcripts of several WhatsApp conversations between people accused of blasphemy and those who appeared to have entrapped them. The transcripts included the exchange between Bibi’s son and the woman.

Bibi’s son, now 26, has been in prison for more than two years awaiting a verdict in his case. He is one of the hundreds who have been detained for online blasphemy in that interim. (Because of the risk of violence, the Times is not naming Bibi’s son or others imprisoned on blasphemy charges.)

A report published in October by a government-run human rights body, which documented the sharp rise in arrests for online blasphemy, identified 11 in 2020, nine in 2021 and 64 in 2022. Then came the revised punishments for blasphemy, fueled in part by a nationwide furor over perceived examples of the crime. Arrests rose drastically, to 213 in 2023 and to a staggering 767 over the first seven months of 2024.

Those arrested on charges of blasphemy often languish in prison for months before their cases make it to trial. In courtrooms, most blasphemy cases are pursued not by the state, but by private groups, typically led by lawyers and backed by networks of volunteers who monitor social media in search of potential violators.

Their aggressive efforts to identify and convict cases reflect a rising “politicization of blasphemy laws,” said Peter Jacob, the executive director of the Center for Social Justice Pakistan, a human rights organization.

“They have made it their cause to punish any possible act of insult to what they hold in reverence,” he said.

Groups such as the Legal Commission on Blasphemy Pakistan, which has pursued dozens of online blasphemy cases, deny that the charges are sometimes contrived. They say there has been an unprecedented surge in genuine cases of online blasphemy.

“Never before have we seen such vile dishonoring of Islam, the holy Quran, Prophet Muhammad and other revered figures,” Rao Abdur Raheem, a lawyer representing the group, recently said in a speech.

In March, a local court in Rawalpindi, a city in Punjab province, sentenced five men to death over accusations of committing blasphemy online. Although their sentences have not been carried out, even accusations of the crime have sometimes resulted in deadly violence.

At least 10 people accused of blasphemy were killed last year in mob or vigilante violence, according to the Center for Social Justice Pakistan.

Accusations of blasphemy can also make for powerful leverage in extortion schemes. A 2024 police report, titled, “Blasphemy Business Group,” exposed a criminal network that secured payoffs by threatening people with fabricated blasphemy charges, often with the complicity of officials in the Federal Investigation Agency.

In response, the government recently restructured the FIA’s cybercrime wing, establishing a separate division — the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency — focused solely on investigating digital offenses, including online blasphemy.

In July, another adjustment gave Bibi hope that her son’s legal troubles might soon come to an end. A Pakistani court, responding to a petition filed by the families of several people who had been arrested on blasphemy charges, called for an independent commission to investigate the possible misuse of the blasphemy law. For a moment, Bibi dared to feel hope.

But a week later, a higher court suspended the order. Once again, Bibi felt like the ground had slipped beneath her.

“I just want my innocent son back home,” she said.