Pakistani author Osman Haneef’s promising debut, The Verdict, is generating a fair amount of well-deserved buzz nowadays. This compact and slim book takes a deep dive into the phenomenon of religious extremism specifically our infamous blasphemy law and shines a bright light on the heavy toll it exacts on minority and marginalised communities in Pakistan.
This is a conversation we never seem to get around to, but one we very desperately need to have because our silence has consequences: the Centre for Social Justice reported recently that 200 blasphemy cases occurred in the last year the highest number so far. Moreover, the trends seem to be changing. Most blasphemy charges were not levelled against other faiths, but against fellow Muslims.