ISLAMABAD (AP) – This is a video clip meant to represent the joy of a bride: actress Saba Qamar, in a fluid white wedding, dressed in a golden hem, spun the singer playing her boyfriend in front of the 17-century mosaics in the city of Lahore, eastern Pakistan.
As soon as the video came to light this month, it went viral, but for the reasons. This is in exasperated radical devotees who flooded social media with claims that Qamar’s dance has desecrated the historic Wazir Khan Mosque.
The clamour, the latest example of how trolling has exploded online in Pakistan since a blockade imposed in March on coronavirus reasons, has confined tens of millions of people into their homes, resulting in a 50% increase in internet use in this conservative Muslim country of more than 220 million other people.
Minority rights activists and social media trackers say there has been an increase in sectarian attacks, hate speech and cries of “blasphemy!”
“This is unprecedented,” said Shahzad Ahmad of Bytesforall, an Islamabad-based social media rights group, The Associated Press.
Toxic trending on Twitter has also taken aim at minorities, blaming the ethnic Hazaras for allegedly bringing the coronavirus to Pakistan from neighboring Iran. Like most Iranians, Hazaras are Shiites, and traditionally make pilgrimages to holy sites in Iran, which has the deadliest virus outbreak in the region. Some Pakistani pilgrims returning home were among the first reported cases of COVID-19 in Pakistan.
After the #Shiavirus began to become a trend on Twitter in April, The Hazaras say they have been denied a job, a service at retail outlets and even a remedy in medical facilities.
Claire Thomas, deputy director of the UK-based Minority Rights Group International, said Ahmadis and Hindu minorities were the target.
Sunni militant teams target the Ahmads, also known as Qadianis, for the birthplace in northern India of the founder of their sect. Activists take them into consideration as heretics because they believe in a prophet after Muhammad’s arrival more than a hundred years ago under the so-called Ahmad.
In 1974, Pakistan declared non-Muslim Ahmads, and any Ahmads claiming to be a Muslim may end up in prison. On a day without getting married this month, #AhmadisAreNotMuslims recorded 45,700 tweets; #QadianisAreInfidel 50,600 tweets; #QadianisAreTheWorstInfidelsInTheWorld 32,600 tweets while #Expose_Qadyani_ProMinisters had 50,600 tweets.
“From the beginning of lockdownArray … there have been more than a dozen concerted hashtag campaigns opposed to the network, describing the network as worthy of death, or non-Muslim or traitor in Pakistan,” said Saleem Uddin, an Ahmadiyya network leader.
The extremists also recently attacked the site of the structure of a Hindu temple in Islamabad and warned the Muslim faithful online that it would be blasphemy against the temple.
In a disturbing social media video, a boy portrays a child as his son. The boy goes to the chamber and sends a message to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan that he will “kill all Hindus” if the temple is built. The video logged approximately 100,000 clicks.
A specific fear is the unprecedented number of blasphemy allegations that, according to Ahmad of the human rights group, has caused some of the defendants to go underground. The attack continued even after the pandemic outbreak ceased in early August.
Under Pakistani law, the rate of blasphemy or insulting Islam is punishable by death. But even mere accusations of blasphemy can cause riots. Any attempt to replace the law to make it more complicated to prosecute has brought radicals to the streets.
Last month, a gunman shot and killed Tahir Naseem, a Pakistani-American, in a courtroom in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Arrested two years ago, Naseem was tried for blasphemy for allegedly pointing himself to himself as a prophet of Islam. Human rights activists said he had a mental disability.
The U.S. State Department said Naseem had been “attracted to Pakistan” from his home in Illinois and caught through blasphemy law.
Days after the fatal shooting, radical devotees demonstrated across Pakistan in search of the killer, praising his actions. Selfies appeared online with smiling police guards carrying Naseem’s killer at his law enforcement hearing: smiles meant to show his for the killer.
Qamar, the actress who danced in the promotional video with singer Bilal Saeed at the Lahore Mosque, apologized online.
“If we have unknowingly hurt anyone’s sentiments we apologize to you all with all our heart. Love & Peace,” she tweeted.
But the trolls had no emotions and last week Qamar and Saeed gave the impression in court on blasphemy charges. Both did not respond to AP requests for comment.
The same radical devout party that attacked them for the dance, Tehreek-e-Labbaik, which won 3 seats in the 2018 local elections in Sindh province, also claimed that a young businessman’s football design was “satanic.”
The list is long: a university professor whose reviews are perceived as too liberal; a poet who defended him; one legislator who said no faith is astonishing to another.
Sunni Muslim cleric Muhammad Ali Mirza was the target after one of his sermons went viral in which he condemned the militiamen and clerics who incited them to kill any blasphemy suspect.
This triggered an attack of vitriol and blasphemy fees were imposed against Mirza. The court rejected them.
Haroon Baloch, also of the defense organization Bytesforall, said he used delicate software that not only tracks hashtags involving a quick call or an incredibly extensive use of a specific word, but also identifies some of the underlying feelings of the posts.
Such a trace would possibly offer early warnings of an “escalation of online threats in physical threats,” he said.
Facebook said it has a larger “content review team, adding in Pakistan, and now we’re finding and acting on more than 95% of hate speech before we report.”
“We are also in close contact with partners on the floor to identify and delete erroneous data that can cause misplaced physical damage offline,” the company told AP.
Twitter said it “does not tolerate the abuse or harassment of others based on religion.”
Journalist Marvi Sirmed was attacked after tweeting about the enforced disappearances of militants in the southwestern province of Balochistan, many of whom are believed to be detained through Pakistani security agencies. His “ironic” Tweet in Urdu spoke of Jesus, provoking an avalanche of threats.
Amnesty International cited Sirmed’s case and the case of Qamar and Saeed on Tuesday, noting that “the Pakistani government no longer wants evidence to see how harmful blasphemy legislation is” and urged that they be deroisted.
Hassan Javid, a history teacher at Lahore, blamed the government for its silence and for allowing abuse on social media.
“The uprising of such accusations, to intimidate and endanger the accused, has become a national pastime in Pakistan, supported by a state that continues to monitor in a planned silence,” he said.
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Associated Press Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to the report.