Junaid Hafeez was a Fulbright scholar who studied in the United States and returned to Pakistan to teach English literature at Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan. In 2013, he was arrested and accused of using a fake Facebook profile to insult the Prophet Muhammad. Human rights groups say the accusation was engineered by an Islamist student group that had targeted Hafeez for his "liberal" teaching and wanted his university position for one of their own. The trial was a procedural catastrophe. At least seven judges were transferred during proceedings. Hafeez's first lawyer, Rashid Rehman, was shot dead in his Multan office in May 2014 after receiving threats connected to the case. Security concerns forced the trial into Multan Central Jail. In 2019 — six years after the arrest — a trial court sentenced Hafeez to death. He has been held in solitary confinement since June 2014. On September 22, a two-member bench of the Lahore High Court began hearing Hafeez's appeal. The judges issued notices to the prosecution and complainant and asked for arguments on the electronic evidence — the Facebook material attributed to Hafeez. His lawyer, Saif-ul-Malook, said he is hopeful this bench will release Hafeez, though he acknowledged that Lahore High Court judges have "generally been reluctant to hear blasphemy appeals." The structural dynamics are blunt. Pakistani policy analyst Raza Rumi told DW that judges face intense pressure in blasphemy cases: acquittals or even procedural decisions can trigger threats and public backlash. Human rights groups have documented threats against judges, lawyers, and prosecutors. The murder of Hafeez's first lawyer is not an outlier — it is the system working as designed, where extrajudicial violence enforces outcomes that the formal legal process might otherwise reject. Islamist voices are applying counter-pressure. Hafiz Ehtisham Ahmed, an Islamabad-based Islamic activist, told DW he believes the court should uphold the conviction, arguing that acquittal would "raise serious questions about the justice system" and that abolishing blasphemy laws could "encourage disrespect for religion." This framing — where releasing an innocent man is cast as a threat to institutional legitimacy — captures the inversion at the heart of Pakistan's blasphemy regime. Human Rights Watch has called for the conviction to be overturned, noting Hafeez's solitary confinement since 2014. His father, Hafeez-un-Naseer, described the toll: "This case has taken everything from us." Lawyer Malook said Hafeez has read thousands of books in prison and predicted that if released, he would become "an internationally recognized intellectual." The next hearing is scheduled for October 10. The case distills a broader pattern: Pakistan's blasphemy laws function less as religious protection and more as a weapon of convenience — available to anyone with a grievance and a willingness to mobilize extrajudicial threat. The question before the Lahore High Court is not really about Facebook posts. It is about whether Pakistan's judiciary can produce an outcome the system's informal enforcers have spent 13 years preventing.
