Reflecting the national unity of the issue of the respect and honour of the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him), both treasury and opposition members joined hands and passed unanimous resolution against blasphemous sketches.
The resolution reads that the publication of blasphemous caricatures and cartoons relating to the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) published by Jyillands-Postan in Denmark that were published in more than 50 members in non-Islamic world in 2005, the derogatory remarks of Byzantine Emperor Manual II publicised by Benedict XVI in Germany in 2006 and the word of all the culmination of such offensive and derogatory caricatures by Charlie Hebdo published in Paris recently has not only hurt but enraged the sentiments of the Muslims all over the world. Freedom of expression does not mean violation of Article 20 of the international convention of civil and political rights.
The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) taking the lead had already deposited a resolution on the issue on January 16. However, PPP MPA Sorhab Khan Sarki tabled an out-of-turn adjournment motion on the issue. The MQM insisted that as they had submitted the resolution on January 16 and the adjournment motion of PPP MPA was not even on the order of the day, their resolution should be put in the house first. However, the deputy speaker, who was in chair at that time, gave her ruling in the favour of adjournment motion of Sarki.
The House debated on the adjournment motion for two hours. Those spoke included 11 members of PPP including the mover Sohrab Khan Sarki, Jamil Zaman, Jam Khan, Khairunisa Mughal, Mumtaz Shamim, Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, Syed Murad Ali Shah, Dr Sikandar Ali Shoro, Muhammad Sajib Jokhio, Rubina Saadat Qaimkhani and Mukesh Kumar Chawla.
However, five members of MQM including Sardar Ahmed, Muhammad Abdur Rauf Siddiqui, Naheed Begum, Muhammad Hussain Khan, Waqar Hussain Shah and Diwan Chand Chawla also made speeches on the resolution. Two speakers from PML-N, Arbab Ghulam Rahim, and Sorath Thebo, and one member from PML-F, Nusrat Bano Seher Abbasi, spoke on the adjournment motion.
Almost all members present in the house wanted to speak on the issue but due to time constraint they were not given opportunity to express their feelings. The speakers criticised the political and moral impotence of the rulers of the Muslim world and the OIC. They said the West was afraid of the rapid spread of Islam and they wanted to check the speed of conversion to Islam of the western people. They said the West fully knows that Islam is the religion of peace, but the ratio of conversion to Islam in Western societies has baffled it. They said the West has inbuilt animosity against Islam. Describing the Western double standards on the hurting of religious feelings, they said when the statues of Buddha were razed in Afghanistan the western media termed it a grave disrespect of religious feelings and left no stone unturned to defame the Muslims, but when the Western countries hurt the feelings of more than one billion Muslims by publishing blasphemous cartoons of their Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him), the double-standard West termed it a freedom of expression. They said the freedom of expression does not allow hurting religious feelings of people of other religions. They said Israel even punishes those who deny the Holocaust.
They said after the 9/11, the then US president had announced that a Crusade had been launched, adding that the US leader perhaps did not know what was the outcome of the previous Crusade wars. They said the members of Sindh Assembly were willing to hold a rally or go to the French Consulate in Karachi and give them a memorandum of disapproval.
They suggested boycotting all products of the countries which were directly or indirectly involved in publication of the blasphemous sketches. After discussing the adjournment motion, a joint resolution of MQM and PPPP was passed unanimously.
The House witnessed two walkouts – one by the MQM when they were not allowed to raise the issue of alleged extra-judicial killings of their workers. They protested for about four minutes and later walked out at 11:27 am; however, they returned back at 11:34 am.
The second walkout was staged jointly by PML-F and PML-N when they were not satisfied with the government response on the short notice question of the leader of the opposition Muhammad Shaharyar Khan Mahar about not giving government rate to sugarcane growers by the sugar millers. Mahar wanted to know what specific steps the government had taken to compel the sugar mill mafia to give the sugarcane growers the government fixed rate, but the agriculture minister was not present and the education minister Nisar Khuhro tried to answer the short notice question of Mahar. However, he could not satisfy the mover, who also blamed that the senior minister was ducking the pointy question and even misquoting the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The dejected members of PML-F and PML-N walked out at 12:33pm and returned back at 12:53pm.
The sitting began 48 minutes late than its scheduled time of 10:00am and at the start there was also no quorum. However, nobody pointed out the quorum. The leader of the House remained absent; however, the leader of opposition was present. Later, the chair adjourned the house till Thursday.
