Since Iran's late spiritual leader Imam Khomeini's infamous fatwa against Rushdie, the world Muslim community has been confused and divided over what constitutes blasphemy and how one should react to it. Pakistan's anti-blasphemy law, particularly Section 295-C, added in 1986, makes it mandatory for the judge to hand down a death sentence (the option of life sentence has been removed) to anyone who defiles the name of the Prophet.

This is so clearly an insult to all that Islam stands for that it has to be condemned in the strongest terms. Pakistan hasbeen consistently abusing these laws to harass its Christian minorities as well as Ahmadi and other Muslims. New Sections of the law (298-B and C) have made it a criminal offence for Ahmadis to call themselves Muslim, to employ nomenclature and appellations associated with Islam, to use Muslim practices of worship and to propagate their faith. In practice, this means that they can be and are imprisoned for calling their place of worship a `mosque' or for using the popular greeting, `Assalam-o-alaikum'.

According to Amnesty International, currently over 2,000 Ahmadis have various religious charges pending against them; some 119 face charges of blasphemy under the dreaded section 295-C. So far, six men -- three Christians, one Sunni Muslim and two Afghan Shia Muslims -- have been sentenced to death under this section. The fact that all of them were acquitted on appeal indicates that the convictions were based on little or no evidence. The victims of these laws are mostly Ahmadis and Christians, though someMuslims who advocate novel ideas have also been targeted.

It is only natural for a Muslim, or for that matter a follower of any religion, to feel annoyed if his revered religious figures are insulted. But today we live in a world where free expression of opinion on any subject is considered a sine qua non of civilised behaviour. What is most important for a Muslim to consider is whether his behaviour is consistent with the conduct of Prophet Mohammad himself, whose honour he is so anxious to safeguard.

The Prophet underwent untold privations and the unremitting hostility of his townspeople in Mecca. ``I was between two bad neighbours, Abu Lahab and Uqbah Iben Abi Mu'ayah; they brought excrement and threw it in front of my door,'' said the Prophet himself once. Clever poets were employed to lampoon him. When he migrated indeed escaped to the neighbouring town of Medina with a few of his companions, the Meccans attacked him there thrice, having mobilised all their superior resources, in a clear bid toexterminate Islam. He was not allowed to enter Mecca to perform Hajj.

But when he entered Mecca victorious the very next year, he did not punish a single person. He did not return evil for evil; he pardoned all. He was the most tolerant of men. Even in Medina, he forgave the Jew who tried to bewitch him and the Bedouin who tried to kill him. Once, much annoyed by a Jew's curse, he merely said: ``Musa (Moses) had suffered a worse state than this.'' He told his companions: ``You are sent to make things easy, not to make them hard and to scare people away.'' What his followers, particularly in Pakistan, are doing today in his name is shameful. The best way to serve Islam would be to follow the spirit of Islam in the light of the conduct of Prophet Mohammad, peace be upon him.