Saad Husain Rizvi and Muhammad Ashraf Asif Jalali were sentenced to four and fourteen years in jail respectively by the District Court of The Hague.
by Massimo Introvigne
“Bitter Winter” has continued to alert, including through a seven-article series in 2021, on both the danger represented by the Pakistani Tehreek-e-Labbaik organization and the failure of authorities in Pakistan to control it.
Now, the District Court of The Hague, in the Netherlands, has sentenced on September 9 two of its leaders to jail penalties for their public appeals to kill Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders. To be clear, “Bitter Winter” condemns Wilders’ anti-Islam crusades and insulting remarks about Muslims and their religion. However, when these remarks cross the boundaries between freedom of expression and hate speech the proper reaction is to prosecute Wilders in a court of law. Calling for his assassination is an entirely different matter. It is indeed a crime, as the Hague court recognized.
The two Tehreek-e-Labbaik leaders who were sentenced—in absentia, as they refused to show up in The Hague and there is no extradition treaty between Pakistan and the Netherlands—are Muhammad Ashraf Asif Jalali and Saad Husain Rizvi. They are both key players in Pakistan’s politico-religious scene.
Saad Husain Rizvi, who got a lesser jail penalty of four years because his remarks were constructed as “incitement to commit murder” but not, unlike Jalali’s, as “promoting terrorism,” is the son of the founder of Tehreek-e-Labbaik, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, who died in 2020. He succeeded his father as leader of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik political party. Jalali, who got fourteen years, is the chairman of Tehreek e Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah, the religious organization of which Tehreek-e-Labbaik is the political arm.
Tehreek-e-Labbaik is periodically banned in Pakistan, then allowed to participate in elections again. It has now become obvious that the government lacks the force to repress the massive street demonstrations of the movement and is compelled to discreetly negotiate with it.
Tehreek-e-Labbaik originated from the conservative Barelvi movement and had directed its violence against Western influence and religious minorities in Pakistan. Recently, it has led the new wave of violence and protests against the Ahmadis in connection with the Sani Supreme Court case.
The Hague verdict may carry no practical consequences, but it is a timely reminder that Tehreek-e-Labbaik is a dangerous organization, that it can also strike outside of Pakistan, and that the Pakistani government should be held accountable for its long tolerance of the group and its violence.
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.
