LAHORE – Hundreds of Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) supporters havestarted marching towards the Pakistan’s capital city to stage a massivedemonstration against a competition of blasphemous caricatures, depictingHoly Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), in the Netherlands.
Khadim Hussain Rizvi of Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), areligio-political party that backs strict blasphemy laws, is leading themarch which made its way out of Lahore via Grand Truck Road.
Hundreds of activists gathered at Data Darbar on Wednesday for thedemonstration organised by the ultra-conservative party that amassed thefifth largest number of votes in a general election last month.
The 51-year-old cleric has announced that TLP workers would “stay on thestreets until either the publication of blasphemous cartoons in theNetherlands is stopped or the government immediately ends diplomatic tieswith the Dutch”.
The demand for the envoy’s expulsion was made during the first round oftalks between TLP’s top leadership and the government in Lahore.
Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Noorul Haq Qadri and the Punjab LawMinister Raja Basharat represented the government in the meeting, whileMuhammad Afzal Qadri, Allama Waheed Noor and Dr Amini from the TLP werealso present.
Most Muslims believe in a total prohibition of visual representation of theprophet, regardless of whether they are positive or negative in nature.
Earlier, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government was urged to notonly “discontinue diplomatic and commercial relations with the Netherlands”but also “demand from other Islamic countries to do the same”.
The TLP had also demanded that since the said competition’s judge is anAmerican national, “therefore, strict measures should also be taken againstthe US”.
The blasphemous cartoon contest, scheduled for November, is being organisedin the Netherlands by Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders — aright-wing anti-Islam lawmaker who has been widely criticised for hisfar-right activities. The contest is to be judged by American cartoonistand former Muslim Bosch Fawstin, who won a similar contest in the US in2015.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has distanced his government from thecontroversial contest, clarifying that: “Wilders is not a member of the[Dutch] government. The competition is not a government initiative.”
In a tweet on Wednesday, Foreign Office Spokesperson Dr Mohammad Faisalsaid that Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi spoke with his Dutchcounterpart to discuss the issue of “blasphemous caricatures”.