Rana Nouman Rafaqat Deserves Freedom
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2023/12/19
Rana Nouman Rafaqat or Ayan Shah, as with Abdul Waheed, has been the victim of religious legal injustice. Injustices against those who do not adhere to the dominant culture’s theology or dogma more broadly.
Whether Christians with a bent towards Catholic or Protestant theocracy, or Islamists with an intent for an Islamic theocracy, or Hindu nationalists subduing Indian democracy, or atheistic dogmatic politico-economic systems as with China, the narratives are the same. Crush individual freedom for collective perceived integrity of ideological structure.
He was detained in March of 2017 and received a death penalty on January 8th, 2021. This was a defining moment in Pakistani legal history because of the first for digital blasphemy cases, so-called.
Over here, in more privileged countries, some Christians will state, as I have heard. “Don’t bother religious people. Leave them alone. Why write on these cases?” Why? Because they matter. As with the crimes of the Canadian state in coordination with the Christian churches against indigenous peoples, accounting for crimes is positive, because justice is positive.
What we see in the case of Abdul Waheed and Rana Nouman Rafaqat is a distinct crime against the dignity and freedom of the individual. The freedom for personal expression in a global cosmopolitan space, the internet.
When some religious leaders declare non-believers condemned to an eternity of fiery torture, and then to imprisonment here, is it any wonder people speak up? They want equality, which then feels like persecution to the dominant groups.
It’s a perversion of justice, and then the reactionary element is to use the power of the State to remove outspoken non-religious people in order to make the others invisible: to make the society, in short, a massive safe space for religious snowflakes – to steal their concepts and phraseology.
Rana Nouman Rafaqat should be released without question, immediately.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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