The Prophet Muhammad was a pervert. Muslims are stupid fucking assholes.

Wall Street Journal - ‘You Must Vote for the Holy Prophet’: Anti-Blasphemy Party Flexes Muscle in Pakistan

New party led by charismatic preacher played an outsize role in last week’s national election.

By Saeed Shah and Bill Spindle

August 1, 2018

A political party formed just last year by a firebrand preacher riding support for a hard-line religious movement made significant inroads in Pakistan’s general election last week.

The party, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, whose burgeoning popularity centers around passion to protect the Prophet Muhammad’s name against blasphemy, didn’t win any seats in the national Parliament. But it garnered more than two million votes and finished third in Pakistan’s most-populous province, Punjab, and won two seats from the city of Karachi for the parliament of the southern province of Sindh.

While the anti-blasphemy movement that buoyed the party remains on the national fringe, it has in recent years sparked violence, assassinations and huge demonstrations.

“The election has allowed them to show their muscle,” said Khaled Ahmed, an expert on religious extremism.

The Labbaik party played an outsize role in the election even beyond its vote count. The eventual runaway winner of the election, Imran Khan, took a strident stance against blasphemy after being criticized by Labbaik.

Labbaik ate into the support base of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, asking voters in campaign speeches to choose between their love of the prophet and Mr. Sharif’s party.

“If you don’t vote for Labbaik, you’ll have to account for that on the Day of Judgment,” candidate Munawwar Zaman said in a campaign speech to a charged up crowd in an inner city area of Lahore. “You must vote for the Holy Prophet.”

Labbaik’s candidates included some religious figures, but also small-time businessmen and minor politicians, giving the party a further toehold in mainstream Pakistani politics.

In Pakistan, blasphemy against the prophet is prohibited by the constitution and punishable by a mandatory death sentence. Hundreds of people remain imprisoned on blasphemy charges or convictions, including Muslims and non-Muslims—often on what human-rights groups say is flimsy or concocted evidence used to settle personal grudges.

Despite the death sentences, no one has been executed—a grievance for Labbaik’s followers.

Blasphemy was catapulted into a national issue in 2011 when a provincial governor, Salmaan Taseer, was assassinated by one of his police bodyguards, after he criticized the country’s blasphemy laws as unjust.

His killer, Mumtaz Qadri, was instantly hailed a hero by many Pakistanis. His case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, which confirmed a death sentence, carried out in 2016 under Mr. Sharif’s government. Tens of thousands poured out for his funeral, including lawyers and other professionals.

A charismatic preacher, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, leapt to the forefront of the new movement. The wheelchair-bound cleric had led a tiny congregation at an obscure mosque. His fiery speeches coursed through social media.

The issue again became a national sensation late last year when lawmakers proposed tweaking an oath parliamentarians must take acknowledging Muhammad as the last and ultimate prophet. In response to what he claimed was a dilution of the oath, Mr. Rizvi laid siege to the capital in November, staging a three-week sit in protest, with thousands of fervent supporters.

At the height of the demonstration, Mr. Rizvi in an interview with The Wall Street Journal cast the movement as a fight against Western values. “There’s a big conspiracy, coming from Europe, to take Pakistan towards liberalism,” he said.

When then-Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal launched a police operation to clear out the protesters, seven activists died, providing the group with what it presents as “martyrs.” They pushed the law minister to resign, blaming him for the proposed oath change.

A spokesman for Labbaik denied accusations by other politicians that Pakistan’s military establishment gave support to the party to damage the votebank of Mr. Sharif, who had clashed with the armed forces when in office. The military denies backing Labbaik or any other political interference.

Mr. Sharif’s party, Pakistan Muslim League-N, had over decades sucked up the votes of conservative Muslims. Defections to Labbaik appear to have tipped the balance in some places, hurting Mr. Sharif’s party and allowing Mr. Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party to win some seats.

In at least 30 constituencies for the national Parliament, Labbaik’s share of the vote appears sufficient to have swung the contest against the PML-N candidate. For instance, in Nankana Sahib, a town in central Punjab, Mr. Sharif’s candidate lost a re-election bid by 2,400 votes as Labbaik scooped up more than 49,000.

The anti-blasphemy movement emerged from Pakistan’s mainstream sect of Barelvi Islam, which is known for its moderation but also a deep reverence for the prophet. The Barelvi culture of praying at the gravesides of saints and celebrating with music and dance is anathema to the purist strains of Islam that spawned the Taliban, al Qaeda and Islamic State.

But the fringe of Barelvi Islam has also exhibited extremist tendencies. Anti-blasphemy movement fundamentalists say if the law doesn’t punish blasphemers with death, they must. Traditional Barelvi leaders complain of difficulty countering new firebrands who they say are misinterpreting the sect’s teachings.

In the run-up to last week’s election, Mr. Iqbal, the former interior minister, was shot while campaigning by a man police said was a Labbaik activist. The group denied any association with the shooter.

“In Islam, people have a very special bond with the Prophet. Those who are not very educated or sophisticated can be easily swayed on this issue,” said Mr. Iqbal, who continued his campaign, after medical treatment, with a bullet still lodged in his stomach. Mr. Rizvi “is playing with the feelings of people for his political agenda,” he said.

—Waqar Gillani contributed to this article.

Write to Saeed Shah at saeed.shah@wsj.com and Bill Spindle at bill.spindle@wsj.com