Dear Editor,
On Oct. 7, Pakistan’s Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of Qaiser Ayub, a Christian father of three convicted of blasphemy over content on a website he says he had shut down years earlier. The court acquitted his brother, Amoon, for insufficient evidence, after more than a decade in prison. As a Muslim, I want your readers to hear a Muslim say plainly that this is wrong.
I belong to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, and we know these laws from the inside. Pakistan’s 1974 constitutional amendment declared Ahmadis non-Muslims, and Penal Code sections 298-B and 298-C bar us from calling ourselves Muslims or practicing our faith, as the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom notes in its October 2026 Pakistan brief. The same brief reports that a gunman killed three Ahmadis outside a mosque in Chenab Nagar in June. Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis are caught in the same net.
“Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis are caught in the same net.”
Some argue that blasphemy laws protect religious feeling and public order, and that outsiders should respect a sovereign country’s courts. Respect for faith matters deeply to me; I never would want anyone to mock the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). But a law that answers an alleged insult with the gallows does not protect faith. It hands a weapon to anyone with a grudge, and it does no honor to the faith it claims to defend.
The Holy Prophet himself said: “Allah is Gentle and loves gentleness in all things” (Gardens of the Righteous, hadith 636). There is nothing gentle about a death sentence for words.
From here in Northern Virginia, where I work as a network and cybersecurity engineer and volunteer with my local mosque, I ask your readers to pray for Qaiser Ayub and his family, and to raise his case with their members of Congress. Muslims who believe in freedom of conscience stand with you.
Farrukh Awan, South Riding, Va.