This past October, when Pakistan's highest court overturned a blasphemy conviction against a Christian woman that carried the penalty of execution, the international community saw this as a rare moment of tolerance from a nation whose population and government is perpetually plagued by Islamist orthodox clerics and extremists who have perverted Islam into a cult where the price of dissent is death.
Despite languishing in prison for approximately eight years after being accused of insulting the prophet Muhammad during an argument over drinking water, Asia Bibi's suffering has not ended quite yet. There have been so many death threats and mass protests demanding her to be hanged that her lawyer actually had to flee the country. However, more recently, it has been announced that the Pakistani government has "caved in" to demands by Islamist demonstrators by signing an agreement with Tehreek-e-Labbaik, an Islamist political party in Pakistan which is responsible for many of the protests against Bibi being allowed to live, which may prevent Bibi from leaving the country for her own safety.
Given the urgency of Bibi's situation, forcing her to remain in Pakistan increases her likelihood of being a Islamist's murder victim which beats the purpose of her acquittal of blasphemy.
In the days following Bibi's release, her husband Ashiq Masih confessed that he was extremely "frightened" for the lives of family and that the government's aforementioned agreement "sent a shiver down [his] spine." He has appealed to the UK government to grant the family asylum there and "grant us freedom." However, the Pakistani government's concession to the radical Islamists has threatened the viability of such an endeavour.
Why would the government condemn an (now legally) innocent woman to a circumstance that could very well end in her demise? The prime minister, former cricket superstar Imran Khan, has previously defended the country's draconian blasphemy laws, the same ones used to sentence Bibi to death in the first place, so perhaps his personal religious beliefs, or maybe his desire to retain the votes of his more religiously orthodox political supporters, may be the reason for his capitulation to Islamist interests. Either way, if the Pakistani government really and truly wishes to show the world that it is become less abusive towards its non-Muslim population, it needs to do more than what it currently has planned.
If Asia Bibi remains in Pakistan, near the same people who accused her of blasphemy, and who are currently hankering for her murder, the next story that the international community hears about Bibi may be about her violent death at the hands of someone who thought that killing her would be the only way to restore Allah's honor.
