Police blocked a rally on Friday by clerics seeking to press their calls for the death of social media activists accused of insulting Islam. Hundreds of security forces sealed off and surrounded the Red Mosque, home of a religious leader, Maulana Abdul Aziz, preventing his followers from staging the gathering. The clerics vowed to try again next week, having already launched blasphemy charges in the Islamabad High Court against five bloggers, who were held for nearly three weeks in January.
Before their release, hard-liners raised the accusations of blasphemy. Abdul Aziz' son-in-law and follower, Salman Shahid, went to court to charge all five bloggers with blasphemy. The five have since fled the country after also receiving death threats. Amid the hearings in the court case, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government launched a campaign in an effort to rid social media of any content considered insulting to Islam ? at least any posted by Pakistanis.
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