Ehsaan Masih was accused of posting on TikTok material on the Jaranwala riots referencing the fabricated blasphemous content that ignited them.
by Massimo Introvigne
The Jaranwala incident of August 16, 2023, was the worst instance of mass violence against Christians in 21st-century Pakistan. Churches were burned, Christian homes were looted, Bibles were burned. International protests followed, and the government promised the most severe punishment of those responsible.
Now, punishment has come, and even in the form of death penalty—but against a Christian. The spark that ignited the Jaranwala incident was the false accusation that two Christian brothers had left on a street, near a mosque, pages of the Quran with derogatory comments written in red, signed with their names and even indicating their addresses and identity card numbers. The police determined that the two Christian brothers never did anything so offensive (and stupid); it was a trap set up by a Muslim who had quarreled with them.
Videos explaining how the trap was prepared largely circulated on social media. To explain what happened, they showed a letter that quoted the alleged blasphemous expressions and referenced the pages of the Quran that were at the center of the incident. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of netizens posted the videos. Allegedly, one was 27-year-old Ehsaan (“Shan”) Masih, a Christian from Sahiwal district in Punjab.
For whatever reason, the local police decided to make an example of him and arrested the young man for blasphemy on August 19, 2023. Although a forensic expertise concluded there was no evidence that he had posted the material on TikTok, the Sahiwal District Anti-Terrorism Court relied on the testimonies of the police officers and on June 29, 2024, sentenced him to death for blasphemy plus to the twenty-two years in jail for “electronic terrorism.”
The local Christian community is divided on whether Masih really posted the material on TikTok. Some insist he didn’t. A local Christian leader told “Bitter Winter” he believes he probably did, “but so did hundreds of others, including Muslims, who were not disturbed.” “This decision is a tragic mockery of justice,” the Christian leader said.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
