‘WHO will watch the watchmen?’ — from the Latin ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ — an expression usually alluded to in the context of political corruption, manifested itself literally in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail this week when a prison guard shot and injured an inmate convicted of committing blasphemy.

The victim, an elderly British-Pakistani with a history of severe mental illness, was sentenced to death on the charge of blasphemy in January this year. The assailant evidently resorted to an elaborate ruse to get close to his target, who had been kept in a separate high-security barracks set aside on the jail premises for those accused or convicted of blasphemy.

It is a particularly profound betrayal when those deputed to guard a life attempt to take it. And when that act is driven by notions of serving a ‘higher cause’, then legal safeguards, right to due process, etc are rendered meaningless, which is a dangerous situation for any society to find itself in.

However, we have been hurtling along this self-destructive path for some time. The murder of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer at the hands of his own guard who turned on him for advocating changes in the blasphemy law, not to mention the rapturous adulation with which the killer was greeted by many members of the legal fraternity, was a watershed moment.

It signified the ultimate triumph of fevered passion over reason, vigilante justice over rule of law. Things have come to such a pass that blasphemy accused are hard-pressed to find lawyers willing, and brave enough, to defend them, especially after the murder in May of Rashid Rehman, who was threatened by fellow lawyers for defending such an individual.

Even judges, especially in the lower courts, are reluctant to be seen as giving any relief to blasphemy accused. In fact, revising the blasphemy law, although necessary, would perhaps not be enough in this noxious environment: only a sustained counter-narrative on multiple levels can change a mindset that sees virtue in committing violence in the name of religion.

Published in Dawn, September 27th , 2014