ISLAMABAD: Amid protests and walkouts over other issues, the National Assembly got one on Thursday to condemn the latest cartoon printed by a French satirical magazine featuring the Pro­phet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and demand ‘dec­isive steps’ internationally to stop such controversies.

But a government-moved resolution unanimously passed by the house, a day after the Paris magazine Charlie Hebdo reappeared with the cartoon on its cover since a deadly attack by Islamist gunmen, also condemned “all kinds of violence under whatever the pretext”.

Lawmakers also marched from the chamber to the front gate of the parliament building, chanting devotional slogans, after the house was adjourned for the day, which earlier saw opposition parties blocking the extension of a controversial ordinance that has imposed an infrastructure development cess on natural gas users other than domestic consumers.

Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique apparently consulted leaders of parliamentary parties before moving the joint resolution against the magazine, an attack on whose Paris offices killed 12 people on Jan 7.

The document said of the house “strongly” condemning “printing and reprinting of the blasphemous caricatures” and taking a “serious note of what it called a “continued trend of their reproduction in numerous other newspapers and magazines of other Western capitals”.

Expressing the belief of the house that “freedom of expression should not be misused as means to attack or hurt public sentiments and religious beliefs”, it drew attention to Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that, it said, “must be followed by all states”.

‘The house is of the firm opinion that such malicious attacks on the sanctity of the holy Prophet (PBUH) and other messengers of Allah are means to hate speech,” it said and added: “These are deliberate attempts to incite violence, create discord, widen misunderstanding among civilisations and thereby provide opportunities to the terrorist elements to capitalise on public sentiments.”

In an apparent disapproval of the Jan 6 attack, claimed by an Al Qaeda branch in Yemen that said it ordered the killings because the weekly had insulted the Prophet (PBUH), the resolution said: “The house condemns all kinds of violence under whatever pretext. Islam is a faith of peace and tolerance. Nobody should be allowed to distract this universal and all-prevailing message and spirit of Islam.”

It called upon the international community, particularly the member states of the European Union, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and the UN community to “take decisive steps to stop such practice”.

Opposition leader Khursheed Ahmed Shah, of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), and parliamentary leaders of all parties present in the house earlier spoke mostly in measured tones to condemn the latest and previous such caricatures printed in the West, while resolution was supported also by a few who raise some more radical voices, like ruling party member Mohammad Safdar, a son-in-law of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, wishing to see “stream of fatwas” on the issue and the volatile independent member Jamshaid Ahmed Dasti saying he too could act like Paris attackers “if I could”.

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan, whose party is boycotting the house since August as part of its protest against alleged rigging in the 2013 general elections, called the Charlie Hebdo’s action ‘despicable’ while addressing a news conference in Islamabad and said ‘such acts will only increase extremism’.

ORDINANCE IN LIMBO: Just after leaders of various parliamentary parties put up a show of unity against the controversial cartoons, opposition parties were up in arms when the government moved a resolution listed on the agenda seeking extension of the Gas Infrastructure Development Cess Ordinance, promulgated on Sept 25 last year for another 120 days from Jan 22.

”In no case it is acceptable to us,” PPP lawmaker Naveed Qamar said of the decree issued last year as an alternative after the Peshawar High Court and later the Supreme Court ruled against the Gas Infrastructure Act of 2011, before the move was also strongly opposed by S. Iqbal Qadri of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and Qaumi Watan Party chief Aftab Sherpao.

Numerically, the PML-N was in a position to get the resolution through, but stopped in its tracks after opposition leader threatened a walkout, accusing the government of taking a wrong route to compensate for its ‘budget failures’.

After Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party chief Mahmood Khan Achakzai, a government ally, suggested what he called a suspension of the move, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed moved for a deferment of the resolution, to which Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi, who chaired the house, agreed, putting the fate of the ordinance in limbo.

The ordinance will lapse its present life of 120 days on Jan 22 unless passed as a bill or extended, only once, through a resolution passed by either house of parliament.

It appeared unlikely for the government to bring opposition parties around on the issue in time while present session of the National Assembly, in which it has overwhelming majority, concludes its present session, according to the announced schedule, on Friday and the Senate, which is not in session now, is already dominated by the opposition.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2015

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