Pakistan has taken another dangerous turn in the path that, if left unchecked, is rapidly taking us down the path of towards religious autocracy. Last week, the Senate Standing Community on Religious Affairs passed the Ehtram-e-Ramazan (Amendment) Bill, 2017 To be fair, this Amendment Bill doesn’t provide much that wasn’t already contained in the original 1981 Ordinance. In a move to reflect rising inflation – hotel owners serving food during the fasting period will see their fines increased from Rs500 to a whopping Rs25,000. On the matter of individuals smoking or eating in public — the penalty remains fixed at Rs-500 fine as well as up to three months’ imprisonment. The media coverage of the legal changes has been misleading. Such unfair provisions have long been there. The recent changes are not substantive and reinforce the earlier legal provisions. Many Pakistanis have paid a heavy price by being targeted, arrested or subjected to violence by fellow citizens in the past. Amid the silence from the political leaders, Bakhtawar Bhutto-Zardari, the daughter of former President Asif Ali Zardari, took to twitter to criticise the ‘ridiculous’ legislation. She questioned the reasoning behind it, highlighting the fact that not everyone can keep fasts and people can die of dehydration fearing punishment from the state. Firstly, the state patronising of such restrictions can potentially lead to mob violence. Last year, an elderly Hindu man was severely beaten up for eating in public during Ramzan. Secondly, the issue of dehydration took a grave turn in the summer of 2015 when hundreds of people died due to heatstroke in Sindh. The heat wave had coincided with the month of Ramzan. Following hundreds of deaths, some clerics had issued instructions not to fast in case it was detrimental to public health. There is no guarantee that such crisis will not appear again. It is virtually impossible to check if a person is fasting or not. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, there is a need to reform the Senate Standing Committee on Religious Affairs to include people who can ascertain the situation logically. Other than the religious representation, the opinion of qualified health experts must be given an equal weight before arguing on any such legislation. Moreover, the Committee must also include progressive Islamic scholars. While fasting in the month of Ramzan is a religious obligation for Muslims, it is strictly a personal matter. The state has no right of imposing such lawson the citizens. Many in Pakistan’s civil society were hoping that Mashaal Khan’s murder was the tipping point. Despite that heinous murder, the telecommunications authority is still asking the citizenry to hunt for people who may be spreading ‘blasphemous’ content. Sadly, the state continues to push Pakistan in an uncertain and dangerous direction. Pakistan is heading in a dangerous direction. *