‘Ayaz Nizami’ Still Has Death Penalty, Deserves Freedom
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2023/12/18
‘Ayaz Nizami’ or Abdul Waheed has been a case for several years for me. It’s a story of ongoing persecution of the non-religious out of Pakistan, where others such as Saba Ismail and Gulalai Ismail were able to escape.
I’ve followed this case since its start, as I was supposed to do an interview with ‘Ayaz’ at the time. Then he was taken in. I wrote on and off, on Waheed’s case, especially as things became progressively worse.
“My Recent Correspondence with ‘Ayaz Nizami’ – #FreeAyazNizami,” “Interview with Fauzia Ilyas – President, Atheist & Agnostic Alliance Pakistan, “On Justice and Fairness: Ayaz Nizami & International Company,” “Do Justice and Let the Sky Fall: #FreeAyazNizami, Free Abdul Waheed,” “Ayaz Nizami Still Needs Help in Pakistan,” “‘Ayaz Nizami’ Needs Far More Attention,” and “Free Ayaz Nizami.” There might be other articles.
Waheed was a Pakistani blogger and Vice President of the Atheist & Agnostic Alliance Pakistan. He was arrested on the 24th of March, 2017. At the time, I was writing for the British magazine, Conatus News. The magazine is gone, but the case is alive.
The allegation against Waheed was blasphemy with the potential for death penalty as an accompanying charge. This became a reality in early January of 2021. If a religious person wants a penalty for a religious law, then they can go right ahead for themselves.
However, if secular person commits an imaginary crime, from their point of view, as in offending a purported deity with a thin skin, then the religious person has no right to impose those religious legal standards on the secular person. Yet, this is the reality for millions of people around thre world.
Waheed simply amounts to one such case. An individual who has to undergo the trauma and injustice of simply not adhering to a belief in a dominant religion of a society. That’s it. So much undue and unnecessary suffering and loss of quality time in life and a time of a life due to religious privilege to persecute.
Others bloggers suffered the same fate as Waheed. #FreeAyazNizami was a trending hashtag on Twitter (now X). This should become a reality again and even more widespread for the justice and freedom of a critical thinker paying the price for freedom of expression. We should not give up on Abdul Waheed or ‘Ayaz Nizami.’
I haven’t, as he deserves justice: so freedom, an apology, and a payment for suffering incurred.
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