by Walter E. Block, Ph.D.
The Daily Bell
Junaid Hafeez has been held in a Pakistani jail for six years, from 2013 to 2019 for the crime of blasphemy.
A former professor of English literature at Bahauddin Zakariya University, run by the government of Pakistan, he has recently been sentenced to death by a court in that nation. He was formerly a Fulbright Scholar at Jackson State University in Mississippi.
Professor Hafeez was found guilty of anonymously posting messages on a Facebook social media file, accused by his own Islamic students.
Blasphemy is uttering or writing a critique of religion. Islam is far from the only religion to have violated free speech rights in this manner, nor is Pakistan the only country to have done so. Other laws abound in many other nations for somewhat different but similar reasons.