Death Penalty News

Prime minister’s aide tells The Media Line that Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are not being misused against minority groups Minorities in Pakistan enjoy equal human rights to other citizens and “there is no misuse of the blasphemy laws against them,” Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, a religious cleric and the Pakistani prime minister’s special representative on interfaith harmony and the Middle East, told The Media Line. Ashrafi was responding to a report released this week by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which recommended that 12 nations remain on the list of countries of concern for religious freedom, among them Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Speaking of Pakistan, the report stated that the coalition government led by Prime Minister Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, which took office in mid-April 2022, had “weaponized the country’s blasphemy laws against former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his cabinet members.”

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran hanged two men Monday convicted of blasphemy, authorities said, carrying out rare death sentences for the crime as executions surge across the Islamic Republic following months of unrest. Iran remains one of the world's top executioners, having put to death at least 203 prisoners since the start of this year alone, according to the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights. But carrying out executions for blasphemy remains rare, as previous cases saw the sentences reduced by authorities. The two men executed, Yousef Mehrad and Sadrollah Fazeli Zare, died at Arak Prison in central Iran. They had been arrested in May 2020, accused of being involved in a channel on the Telegram message app called “Critique of Superstition and Religion,” according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Both men faced months of solitary confinement and could not contact their families, the commission said.

Nigerian authorities must immediately release prominent humanist and rights defender Mubarak Bala, who has been detained for more than 2 months without charge on accusations of blasphemy, a group of independent UN human rights experts said on Friday. “The arrest and detention of Mr. Bala amounts to persecution of non-believers in Nigeria”, they said. “We are concerned that he may be prosecuted under anti-blasphemy laws that provide for capital punishment in Nigeria.” Arrest and death threats Mr. Bala, President of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, has led human rights education campaigns to promote freedom of religion or belief and to raise awareness about religious extremism online or on social media. He was arrested at his home in Kaduna state, located in the northwest, on 28 April, following a petition filed with police in neighbouring Kano state, alleging he had insulted the Prophet Muhammad in Facebook posts. Mr. Bala is being held in Kano state, where he...

Sudan plans to decriminalise apostasy this year, a member of a key political group involved in the country's transitional government said. A draft bill proposes repealing the death penalty for apostasy and replacing it with a law criminalising "takfir", or the act of declaring a Muslim an apostate or non-believer, said Mohammad Hassan Arabi, a member of the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) coordination council. The FFC is a political umbrella group involved in Sudan's transitional government. The death penalty for apostasy "puts freedom of opinion and belief at risk and undermines social peace and stability", Arabi told The Sudan Tribune. A draft of this year's Miscellaneous Amendments Bill includes the change, he explained. The bill will have to go before the ruling sovereign council and the civilian government cabinet for approval before going into effect. Sudan's current penal code was drafted under former dictator Omar a...

The Ex-Muslims of North America have just launched their first billboards in Atlanta, Chicago, and Houston with signs aimed at like-minded people: Those who were raised Muslim, and no longer believe its theology, but who may be hesitant to say so out loud for a variety of reasons. The signs are part of the group’s #AwesomeWithoutAllah campaign. The signs say “Nearly one in four Muslims raised in the US have left Islam” with the tagline “Godless. Fearless. Ex-Muslim.” Why is this type of campaign so important? Because even if there’s no legal penalty for leaving the religion, there are large social and cultural ones. For some, the threat of violence looms large. “In a dozen Muslim-majority countries, ex-Muslims are condemned to the death penalty”, said Muhammad Syed, President of Ex-Muslims of North America. “In the West, our existence is not a crime, but we still face isolation, threats, and abuse by our own families and former faith community. Unsurprisingly, many...

According to recent Datafolha research, support for the use of the death penalty has grown significantly in the last nine years. The recent poll found 57% of those interviewed in favor of the adoption of capital punishment. In 2008, the last time that the institute polled on this subject, 47% held the same opinion. This is the highest number recorded since the Datafolha started polling on this subject in 1991. But it is within the statistical margin of error - 2 % points higher or lower - with levels recorded in 1993 and 2007, when 55% of the population said they were in favor of the punishment. The death penalty is not used in Brazil, although it is provided for during times of a declared state of war in paragraph 37 of article 5 of the Constitution. The last time Brazil was in a declared state was during the Second World War. In 2015, for the 1st time in more than 150 years, Brazilians were condemned to capital punishment. The executions of Marco Archer in January foll...

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is relieved to learn that Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mohamed, a Mauritanian blogger sentenced to death in 2014 for "blaspheming" the Prophet in a blog post, was finally freed yesterday.  Detained for the past three years, Mohamed was released after an appeal court in the northern city of Nouadhibou reduced his sentence to two years in prison. Prosecutors have nonetheless appealed against the court's decision, calling it too lenient.  Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mohamed's judicial ordeal began when a Nouadhibou criminal court found him guilty of apostasy and sentenced him to death in December 2014, although he gave a public apology and denied intending to insult the Prophet in his December 2013 blog post.  A Nouadhibou appeal court upheld the death sentence on 21 April 2016 but changed the charge on which was convicted to "atheism" and asked Mauritania's supreme court to rule on the sincerity of his professed repentance.  ...

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has released a ground-breaking report that takes a look at blasphemy laws around the world and compares them to international human rights standards. The report covers instances of the blasphemy laws in 71 countries which include countries like Pakistan and Indonesia, known for harsh punishments like the death penalty to countries like Canada and Switzerland which have minor penalties like fines.  Among the six countries which were ranked the worst in terms of blasphemy laws, Iran topped the list while Pakistan ranked second, followed by Yemen, Qatar, Somalia, and Egypt. USCIRF scored the countries based on Severity of the Penalty, Freedom of Religion, whether the State protected or preferred certain Religion Protections, Freedom of Expression and Discrimination Against Groups. Of the 71 states studied, 59 or 83 percent sanction blasphemy with imprisonment. Iran and Pakistan, the two countries with ...

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 9 — Islam prescribes death against Muslims who leave the religion for atheism, if they are “stubborn” and refuse to repent, according to Negri Sembilan mufti Datuk Mohd Yusof Ahmad. However, he conceded that Shariah courts in the country cannot yet implement such punishments, and as such religious authorities must redouble their efforts to curb the spread of atheism, Malay daily Sinar Harian reported today. “If they are still stubborn, then the individual must be punished by death. That is the consensus of Muslim scholars,” he was quoted saying. “Considering Islamic laws cannot be implemented 100 per cent in this country, authorities must do what they can to curb this. The jurisprudence has said that even if we cannot do everything, we cannot just leave it out.” The punishment for the offence of apostasy under the controversial Islamic penal law of hudud is death. Negri Sembilan’s Shariah laws do not criminalise apostasy. However Section 48 of i...

Atheism remains one of the most extreme taboos in Saudi Arabia. It is a red line that no one may cross. Regarded on a par with terrorists, atheists in Saudi Arabia suffer imprisonment, marginalisation, slander, ostracisation and even execution. Efforts at normalisation between those who believe and those who don't remain bleak. Despite constant warnings issued by Saudi religious authorities about 'the dangers of atheism', which is, according to them, 'tantamount to not believing in God', many citizens in the kingdom are turning their backs on Islam. Among other things, perhaps what is primarily driving Saudis to abandon their religion is the country's strict and dehumanising codex of Islamic law coupled with easy access to information and mass communication. Unfortunately, those who are open about their atheism find themselves harshly punished or forced to live double lives. Just recently Saudi Arabia sentenced another atheist to death for uploading a...

Imtiaz Shams (right) has set about combatting the intimidating atmosphere for nonbelieving Muslims on campuses by holding several Faith to Faithless meetings in universities around the UK. The penalty sharia law stipulates for apostasy is capital punishment. Sulaiman Vali is a softly spoken 33-year-old software engineer. A natural introvert not drawn to controversy or given to making bold statements, he’s the kind of person who is happiest in the background. He lives alone in a modest house on a quiet street in a small town in East Northamptonshire. He doesn’t want to be any more specific than that about the location. “If someone found out where I lived,” he explains, “they could burn my house down.” Why should such an understated figure, someone who describes himself as a “nobody”, speak as if he’s in a witness protection programme? The answer is that six years ago he decided to declare that he no longer accepted the fundamental tenets of Islam . He stopped being a beli...

Rodrigo Duterte President Duterte wants to reimpose the death penalty to ensure that criminals pay for their sins in case God does not exist. Duterte said "bleeding hearts" like priests and human rights groups claimed that the death penalty did not deter crime when it was in effect for years. But he said the problem was past presidents did not have the political will to use it to strike fear in the hearts of criminals. "Every president along the way didn't impose it only because the Catholic Church and all the bleeding hearts would say that only God could kill. But what if there is no God?" said Duterte in a speech in Malacanang Monday afternoon. "When a 1-year-old baby, 18-months-old baby is taken from the mother's arms brought under a jeep and raped and killed. So where is God? My God, where are you?" asked Duterte. "I believe in God but that is my perpetual question to him. Where were you when we needed you? It's no...

Saudi Arabia has sentenced a 28-year-old man to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for tweeting that he is an atheist. The nation’s strict Sharia law defines atheism as “terrorism,” and the man refused to take back his words, insisting that he has a right to express his lack of belief.  Saudi religious police who monitor social networks found over 600 tweets from the man, mocking the Koran and stating that teachings of the prophet Muhammad's lies stokes cultural hostility.  In addition to imprisonment and violent punishment, he was also fined 20,000 riyals (over $5,300).  Laws defining atheism as terrorism were introduced under King Abdullah in 2014, aimed at stopping political and religious dissent that could “harm public order.”  In 2012, blogger and activist Raif Badawi, 32, ran a website called “Free Saudi Liberals” and was arrested for "insulting Islam through electronic channels,” "setting up a website that undermines general security," ...