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Karachi. More than 40,000 people rallied in Pakistan’s southern city of Karachi on Sunday, police said, against the controversial reform of a blasphemy law that was behind the killing of a senior politician.

Religious groups blocked a main thoroughfare in Karachi’s teeming metropolis holding banners in support of the police commando who shot dead Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer last Tuesday over his views in favor of the law’s amendment.

Taseer had called for reform of the blasphemy law that was used recently to sentence a Christian woman to death.

But his outspoken liberal stance offended the country’s increasingly powerful conservative religious base.

“Mumtaz Qadri is not a murderer, he is a hero,” said one banner in the national Urdu language in support of the man who carried out Pakistan’s most high-profile political killing in three years.

“We salute the courage of Qadri,” said another.

“There are at least 40,000 people here and more are coming,” senior police official Mohammad Ashfaq said, watching over a sea of protesters bellowing slogans in favor of “jihad” and waving the flags of religious parties.

Another senior police official confirmed the number and said some 3,000 police officers were guarding the event, which had forced the closure of businesses and roads in the area.

Rally leader Qari Ahsaan, from the banned Islamist group Jamaat ud Dawa, addressed the crowd from a stage.

“We can’t compromise on the blasphemy law. It’s a divine law and nobody can change it,” Ahsaan told the masses.

“Our belief in the sanctity of our prophet is firm and uncompromising and we cannot tolerate anyone who blasphemes,” 40-year-old laborer Abdul Rehman said at the rally.

“Whoever blasphemes will face the same fate as Salman Taseer.”

Controversy over the law flared when former information minister Sherry Rehman tabled a bill in November calling to end the death penalty for blasphemy, after Christian mother-of-five Asia Bibi was sentenced to hang.

Rights activists also say the law encourages Islamist extremism in a nation already besieged by Taliban attacks.

Rehman spoke from her heavily-guarded home in Karachi on Sunday and said she would not be cowed by the protest.

“They can’t silence me... it’s not any extreme position like a repeal bill, it’s very rational. They can’t decide what we think or speak, these are man-made laws,” Rehman said .

Politicians and conservative clerics have been at loggerheads over whether President Asif Ali Zardari should pardon Asia Bibi.

Pakistan has yet to execute anyone for blasphemy, but Bibi’s case has exposed the deep fault lines in the conservative country.

Bibi’s trials began in June 2009, when Muslim women laborers refused to drink from a bowl of water she was asked to fetch while out working in the fields.

Days later, the women complained that she made derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammed.

Bibi was then set upon by a mob and arrested by police. After spending more than a year in prison, she was sentenced on Nov. 8, last year.

Christian groups held memorial services in the Punjab cities of Lahore and the capital Islamabad on Sunday to honor the assassinated Muslim governor Taseer.

Bishop Alexander John Malik led a rare gathering of 300 Christians at a cathedral in the eastern city of Lahore.

“He was a voice for the oppressed section of society. We dedicate this day to him,” Malik said, before leading prayers for the governor.

Most of those convicted of blasphemy in Pakistan have their sentences overturned or commuted on appeal through the courts.

Rights activists and pressure groups say it is the first time that a woman has been sentenced to hang in Pakistan for blasphemy.

 
Agence France-Presse