After six years in solitary confinement in Multan, Pakistan, Junaid Hafeez – a 33-year-old Fulbright scholar and lecturer – was handed a death sentence in December 2019 for allegedly ‘defiling’ the name of Prophet Muhammad.
Junaid’s father, Hafeez-ul Naseer, attributes the blasphemy charges to opposition his son faced from Islamist clerics over his progressive teachings while lecturing in the English department at Bahauddin Zakariya University in 2011.
