Author: Barry Bearak
Publication: New York Times
Date: February 19, 2001
That calamitous night, the editor
left in charge of the newspaper's letters page was a heroin addict, just
a few days out of detox.
As he recalls it now, his prescribed
sedatives were proving no match for his cravings. When a long letter to
the editor arrived via e-mail, he barely read past the title, which seemed
to him harmless enough: "Why Muslims Hate Jews."
Pakistan is a Muslim country. "I
thought if the letter was negative to anyone, it'd be negative to Jews,"
the editor, Munawwar Mohsin, said by way of alibi, looking thoroughly woebegone
and sitting in Peshawar's central jail. He had put the letter at the top
of the section.
This careless editing may now prove
his fatal undoing, for Mr. Mohsin and six of his colleagues at The Frontier
Post have been charged under the nation's blasphemy law, which can carry
the death sentence. The wordy letter, published on Jan. 29, turned out
to be a sacrilegious attack on the holy Prophet Muhammad. A furious mob
was soon on its way to the newspaper's offices, with outraged policemen
not far behind.
The authorities immediately shut
down the paper, whose nervous management then bought ad space in the pages
of its rivals to make abject apology. The amends claimed that the English-language
Frontier Post was itself the victim of some unspecified conspiracy. "We
appeal to the nation to stand by us in this hour of adversity and sympathize
with us," the ad said.
But piety, and not pity, was the
prevailing sentiment here in Peshawar, a city of one million people that
sits to the east of the Khyber Pass near the border with Afghanistan. Leaders
of fundamentalist political parties urged dramatic displays of dismay.
On Jan. 30, as outnumbered policemen looked on, protesters torched the
Frontier Post's printing press, with piles of unsold newspapers serving
as fodder for the fire.
At this juncture, the nation's military
ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, made public his own consternation, though
it did not include any condemnation of the mob. His disapproval focused
on the abuse of "press freedom" that had allowed the blasphemous letter
into print.
To many of his critics, his response
seemed indicative of the general's inability or unwillingness to take on
the Islamic fundamentalists - and yet another portent of the nation's drift
toward religious intolerance.
Pakistan, with 150 million people,
is a near-bankrupt country with a nuclear arsenal and explosive problems.
In October 1999, the army seized power in a coup, and General Musharraf
declared himself the steward of a modern and tolerant state. He promised
social reforms, but whenever he has met opposition from the fundamentalists,
he has backed down.
Indeed, in April the general tried
to modify the blasphemy law, which, according to civil rights groups, is
often used in personal vendettas and the persecution of minorities. The
proposal was modest, urging more investigation before charges are filed;
nonetheless, when fundamentalists objected, it was discarded.
By any standard, the letter in The
Frontier Post of Jan. 29 was blasphemous. Mr. Mohsin, the heroin addict,
finally got around to reading it in the morning. He was at home, he said.
A colleague phoned to alert him about angry calls to the newspaper.
The frightened editor then allowed
his eyes to roam beyond the opening lines. He was appalled. The writer,
who used the single name BenDZac, portrayed Muhammad as a liar, a murderer,
an anti- Semite, a "nazi" and a male chauvinist with a formidable libido.
Such heresy rarely sees the printed
page in Pakistan. The style of The Frontier Post, like that of other newspapers,
was never even to mention the Holy Prophet without parenthetically adding
the reverent phrase "peace be upon him."
"As a Muslim, I could never think
of abusing our Holy Prophet," said Mr. Mohsin, 40, a slightly built man
who has bounced between newspaper jobs while also caroming in and out of
occasional drug rehabilitation.
The jailers have shaved his head,
as is routinely done to drug addicts, of which this country has an abundance.
The United Nations estimates Pakistan's heroin population at 1.5 million,
perhaps the world's largest.
"I was craving that night," Mr.
Mohsin said, pleading for understanding. "I'm only a human being. I make
errors. And think of the conditions I was working under."
The Frontier Post, once well-respected,
already had fallen on hard times. Its owner, Rehmat Shah Afridi, is in
prison on charges of drug trafficking. The staff had gone unpaid for two
months.
Imtiaz Hussain, the paper's chief
reporter, said the number of workers in the newsroom had fallen to about
8 or 10 from 28. On Jan. 29, he had attended a news conference about the
plight of Afghan refugees. He was unaware of the offensive letter. When
he came to the office, he found the police in the entryway.
"I was asked, `What is your position
here?' " he recalled. "I said, `chief reporter.' They said, `All right,
you have to come with us.' "
The police were unacquainted with
newspaper operations, so they threw a big net to make sure none of the
guilty got away. Arrested along with Mr. Hussain and Mr. Mohsin were The
Frontier Post's news editor, the man who operated the computer system,
a 76-year-old feature writer and a guest who had picked an unfortunate
time to visit.
"It is my bad luck that my designation
contains the word editor," said Aftab Ahmad, the news editor. "I told them
a news editor deals with news, not letters. They did not understand anything.
What is e-mail? What is the Internet? What is a server? What makes up a
page? They were unfamiliar with any of these things."
Some sorting out did get done, and
the guest managed to be released. But the others were all charged under
the blasphemy law, as were the newspaper's managing editor and a teacher
who writes an occasional editorial from the city of Lahore. Those final
two suspects were not present when the arrests were made. They have since
fled.
"I am a practicing Muslim," said
Mr. Ahmad, 34, who was sitting beside Mr. Mohsin in jail. "Nobody in their
right mind would knowingly publish things so sacrilegious. In the first
place, it is against our faith. In the second place, I have a family, two
little daughters. Why would I intentionally ruin all our lives?"
Peshawar has a large press contingent,
and those reporters seem to have convinced the authorities and many of
the mullahs that not all of those arrested bear responsibility for the
letter. The chief reporter, the feature writer and the computer operator
have been freed on bail, though the charges against them stand as investigation
continues.
"Yes, we have received the information
that the letter was printed by mistake," said Dr. Murad Ali Shah, a spokesman
for the Jamaat-i-Islami political party, which governs Peshawar. "But some
mistakes are deliberate. Yes, there was a drug addict overseeing the letters.
But you must ask yourself: why was this particular man placed in charge
on this particular night?"
He said he suspects a conspiracy
by Americans, specifically American Jews. "The Americans have done many
such things, expressing themselves with such hatred," he said, adopting
a popular line of reasoning. "Most anything bad that happens, prices going
up, whatever, this can usually be attributed to the I.M.F. and the World
Bank, which are synonymous with the United States. And who controls the
United States? The Jews do."
In the Pakistani press, the unknown
blasphemer BenDZac has usually been presumed to be "a Jew." Indeed, in
a spare exchange of e-mail messages with The Times, BenDZac strongly suggested
he is Jewish and said he hoped his letter would prompt some Muslim soul-
searching about their "hate for Jews and Israel." He allowed that recent
violence in Jerusalem may have somewhat overheated his sentiments and that
perhaps "I should have chosen my words more carefully."
Mr. Mohsin would surely agree. He
now believes cyberspace is a launching pad for anonymous hate-mongers.
As a heroin addict, he was a slack defender, and he despises himself for
it, he said sullenly.
And yet, as one of the jail house
guards was about to pull him away, he added one more plea. Though he might
appear depressed, he continued to have faith, he said softly.
"I believe in Allah," he said. "He
knows I did not do this thing intentionally. He will be a fair judge, and
he is almighty."
