“Engineer Muhammad Ali Mirza: Moderate Islamic Theologian in trouble in Pakistan”, Bitter Winter, August 18, 2023:
“Engineer Muhammad Ali Mirza is a Pakistani Islamic theologian whose online lectures have more than one million followers. He is referred to as “Engineer” as he has a degree in Engineering and works part-time for the government in this capacity.
He is also a man in danger. Earlier this month, he escaped an assassination attempt when a Madrasa student armed with a knife tried to break into his Mirza Research Academy. The engineer had escaped other assassination attempts in 2019, 2021, and 2022. The extremist group Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan offered a reward of Rs. 500,000 to those who would succeed in killing him.
Now, however, an amendment to the Pakistani blasphemy law puts him at risk of being jailed for life.
What did Mirza do to enrage fundamentalists? He is certainly occasionally provocative. When former India’s ruling party BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma (who lost her job after the incident and was condemned by both the U.S. Department of State and the BJP itself) made derogatory comments on Prophet Muhammad in a TV debate—in her case, the reward offered by Tehreek-e-Labbaik for killing her was Rs. 5 million—the Engineer said that one should consider that she had been provoked by a Muslim panelist who had offended Hindu gods in the same show……”
Read the full article at Bitterwinter.org
