Pakistan's blasphemy laws, expanded significantly under military ruler Zia-ul-Haq's Islamization program in the 1980s, prescribe severe penalties including death for insulting Islam, the Quran or the Prophet Muhammad, and though no judicial execution has been carried out under these provisions, accusations have repeatedly triggered mob violence, extrajudicial killings of accused individuals and assassinations of officials who called for reform, most notably the 2011 killing of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer by his own bodyguard over his criticism of the law.
A 1974 constitutional amendment declared Ahmadi Muslims, who consider their nineteenth-century founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad a prophet, to be non-Muslims for legal purposes, a status a 1984 ordinance extended by criminalizing Ahmadis' use of Islamic terminology and practice that resembles Muslim worship, including referring to their places of worship as mosques; Ahmadis face frequent violence, including a 2010 attack on two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore that killed dozens of worshippers during Friday prayers.
Hindu and Christian minorities, concentrated respectively in Sindh province and parts of Punjab, report frequent blasphemy accusations, forced conversion allegations involving minor girls, and demolition or seizure of temples and churches, issues the US State Department's International Religious Freedom Report has documented in successive years.