It will take us some time to absorb the full horror of the recent mob-murder of a young Christian couple at a brick kiln not far from Lahore.

The murkiness of the blasphemy allegation, the suspicion that the incident was sparked by a financial dispute, and the chilling manner of the couple’s death make the criminal deed all the more horrific, especially as it involved a frightening herd instinct.

Just days after the murder, we witnessed a similar episode of shame and sorrow: on Thursday, in Gujrat, an assistant sub-inspector killed a detainee with an axe at his police station, later saying that the victim had uttered blasphemous words.

The police say there is no evidence of this claim, and that their colleague was enraged at the insults hurled at him by the murdered man who was said to be mentally unsound.

Yet that makes the underlying point all the more significant: increasingly, suspicions of blasphemy are not only creating dangerous and frequently deadly flashpoints of violence, the charge itself can be, and is, easily misused to mask other motives.

If ASI Faraz Naveed from Gujrat felt that the law and his colleagues might view his crime in a more lenient light if he cited blasphemy as the motive behind the murder, it is only because all too often that has proved to be the case.

Pakistan has witnessed assault after assault on this count, each one eventually brushed under the carpet — even in those cases where it is evident that the charge was falsely used to cover up other, more ulterior, motives.

The law itself is problematic; its existence has emboldened individuals or mobs to take the law into their own hands and set out to slaughter. And when this happens, fear spreads through entire communities, often forcing them to leave their homes and flee en masse.

It is essential to find some way to stop the violence and bloodletting that follows blasphemy accusations.

Such a pass has been reached that lawyers and judges involved in blasphemy cases find themselves a target, and let it not be forgotten that Mumtaz Qadri, the murderer of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer, was in the news recently because he incited a prison guard to attack another detainee.

Correcting the path is, no doubt, a daunting task; yet, it must be done if Pakistan has any aspirations at all of being counted amongst the world’s more progressive nations.

Published in Dawn, November 8th , 2014