Pakistan's Blasphemy Law Accusations Continue to Rise in 2026

A 2026 update tracking Pakistan's blasphemy law situation shows accusations continuing to climb rather than decline, with a notable shift in how these cases now originate. According to Pakistan's National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR), the majority of blasphemy cases in recent years have begun online — through WhatsApp screenshots, Facebook posts, or TikTok videos — rather than through in-person disputes or accusations, marking a meaningful change in how these laws are being weaponized in practice.

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Pakistan's blasphemy laws, particularly Sections 295-B and 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code, criminalize acts and speech deemed insulting to Islam or the Prophet Muhammad, with penalties ranging up to the death penalty. While the laws apply broadly, Christians and the Ahmadi religious community remain disproportionately targeted relative to their small share of Pakistan's population — Christians make up roughly 1.6% of the country, yet are consistently overrepresented among blasphemy defendants. According to Pakistan's Centre for Social Justice, of the 344 individuals accused of blasphemy in 2024 alone, 14% were Ahmadis and 6% were Christians, disproportionate figures given each community's small population size, while the remaining majority of accusations were brought against Muslims and Hindus.

The Ahmadi community occupies a particularly precarious legal position in Pakistan. A 1974 constitutional amendment formally declared Ahmadis to be non-Muslims, and subsequent laws — including a 1984 ordinance and specific penal code sections — criminalize basic expressions of Islamic faith by Ahmadis, such as using standard Muslim greetings or reciting verses from the Quran, on the grounds that doing so "defiles" the character of mainstream Islam. Rights researchers who have studied the community's legal history describe cases where Ahmadis have been charged simply for translating religious texts into regional languages, or for using religious greetings in everyday conversation.

Beyond formal prosecution, the update highlights how blasphemy accusations continue to function as tools of economic exploitation, independent of their religious framing. Human Rights Watch and other organizations have documented cases where accusations were used to seize property or businesses from religious minorities, exploiting the reality that an accusation alone — regardless of its outcome in court — can trigger displacement, mob violence, or financial ruin well before any legal process concludes. Legal professionals who take on blasphemy defense cases face their own risks: lawyers defending the accused report being ostracized by the broader legal community, and past incidents have included the murder of a judge who acquitted blasphemy defendants.

The 2023 Jaranwala incident, in which mobs burned more than 20 churches in Punjab following blasphemy allegations against two Christian men, remains a widely cited turning point illustrating how quickly individual accusations can escalate into large-scale communal violence against an entire religious community, not just the accused individuals. Advocacy organizations and legal experts tracking asylum cases note that this ongoing pattern has strengthened the grounds for religious minority asylum claims originating from Pakistan, with country-of-origin information increasingly reflecting the online-accusation trend as a documented, current risk factor rather than a historical one.

For SARFO's tracking purposes, Pakistan's blasphemy law regime represents one of the most institutionally entrenched forms of religious freedom restriction in South Asia — not a series of isolated incidents, but a functioning legal architecture that continues to generate new cases against religious minorities, seemingly independent of whatever political administration is in power at a given time.