The recent European Parliament resolution on the blasphemy laws in Pakistan has created quite a scare in some parts of Pakistani business community. They are scared that Pakistan will loose the GSP+ status and that in turn will cause huge unemployment. There is the core religious argument which all religious scholars, with varying degrees of eloquence, have put forward. I am not going to touch that because first of all I am not a religious scholar and secondly as I said it has been already presented. What I am going to present it a political case.
This whole issue originated in France, where in 2006, a publication called Charlie Hebdo ( French for Charlie Weekly) published cartoons of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). The magazine kept on doing such stunts but the whole thing took a radical turn when last year French President Emmanuel Macron jumped in and declared “We will not give up cartoons”. This changed the status of the issue from a magazine to official French policy. Why did he do that? A simplistic answer is that France is going to hold elections in April 2022 and he needs some issue to win, like Modi in India made cow slaughter an issue. Macron may be Modi in some sense but France is not India. So what is the issue?
