Murder On Campus:
The story of Mashal Khan (Humanist & Socialist) lynched by a mob in Pakistan after he was accused of blasphemy.
Horrific story! Until blasphemy is removed from the statute book, these sort of incidents will continue and others will take the law onto their own hands. The Muslim cleric who said that the mob were justified in killing him because what he said was blasphemy against Islam, but that he condemned the way the mob treated his body after death, as that was not Islamic, says it all really. This mindset will take decades, if not centuries to change...or maybe it will never do so. We, who live in a free society, just cannot comprehend what it must be like to live in such a country, and these fellow students, who beat and shot him, were the so called intelligent ones in Pakistan.
The law of blasphemy is used by totalitarian govts as a control measure. It is a sign of civilisation when a country abolishes this ridiculous law. It is just over 300 years ago that a young man was hanged for blasphemy in Edinburgh and the law was abolished ages ago but although not used in Ireland it was only abolished recently.
The answer is avoid living in a theocracy if at all possible and make sure that politics and religion are kept separate at all costs.