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Bitter Winter

A magazine on religious liberty and human rights

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Home / From the World / News Global

Samsung Outlet Attacked Over Blasphemy Charges in Pakistan

07/12/2022Massimo Introvigne |

The rumor that a QR code connected to a Wi-Fi network with a blasphemous name led to the riots.

by Massimo Introvigne

Samsung billboards were destroyed by the mob. From Twitter.
Samsung billboards were destroyed by the mob. From Twitter.

An incident largely debated in the social media opens a window on the peculiar world of blasphemy charges in Pakistan. It took several days to netizens and the police to clarify what happened. Although not everything is clear, more details have now emerged.

On July 2 the rumor spread that a QR code posted on a Samsung promotional billboard outside the Star City Mall in Karachi was “blasphemous.” According to eyewitnesses who posted on Twitter, it was unclear where exactly the blasphemy was, but a mob congregated, reminiscent that weeks before accusations had widely circulated that a QR code on 7UP bottles looked like the name of Prophet Muhammad.

Samsung billboards were destroyed, and rioters entered into the Samsung store and tried to continue their destructive work. At some stage, they started asking each other in which sense exactly the QR code was blasphemous. They did not find an answer, but somebody explained that the QR code was related to a WiFi network to which the name had been given of Mu’awiya, the 7th-century first Umayyad caliph, followed by an insult common in all languages and referred to the allegedly less than honorable profession of his mother. Mu’awiya was the opponent of ‘Ali, and from this opposition the schism between Sufi and Shi’a Islam originated. The Shiites regard Mu’awiya as a villain, while for Sunni Muslims, although he made mistakes and ruled oppressively, he should still be respected as a companion of the Prophet and one of the scribes of the Holy Quran.

An image of the riots. From Twitter.
An image of the riots. From Twitter.

It is thus probable that the network was created for personal use by a Shi’ite citizen. To this day, no evidence has emerged that the Samsung QR code directed to that particular network, while by looking at the list of all the networks available in the area, the name of the one with the offensive allusion to Mu’awiya would have been found.

It is thus true that somebody offended Mu’awiya through the name of a Wi-Fi network, but it is unclear whether Samsung had anything to do with it (which Samsung later denied, while promising an internal investigation among its employees). Social media present different speculations, including the possibility of a provocation by Samsung’s competitors. Samsung has 23% of the Pakistani market for cell phones, and after the incident several pious Muslims posted videos of themselves smashing their Samsung devices.

More anti-Samsung destruction. From Twitter.
More anti-Samsung destruction. From Twitter.

Some media claimed that the riots were orchestrated by the anti-Shi’a organization Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, whose story has been told in details in a Bitter Winter series. Some even accused the extremist group of having fabricated the whole incident. Tehreek-e-Labbaik answered, ambiguously, that it had not incited anybody to resort to violence against Samsung.

With or without Tehreek-e-Labbaik, that mobs convene and start wreaking havoc in Pakistan when they hear charges of blasphemy without even understanding to what they refer is disturbing. Even more disturbing is that the police arrived and, rather than arresting the rioters, took 27 employees of Samsung into custody, threatening to file blasphemy charges, which in Pakistan can lead to the death penalty.

In 1895, French psychologist Gustave Le Bon published “The Crowd,” a very successful book where he maintained that those who become part of a mob are in a state similar to hypnosis and cannot resist the collective fury. The Karachi incident is a textbook example of Le Bon’s crowd psychology. Only, the police officers sent to control the mob became part of the mob themselves. 

Tagged With: Muslims, Pakistan, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan

Massimo Introvigne
Massimo Introvigne

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.

www.cesnur.org/

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