In a move to prevent the abuse of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, the government has drafted a bill attempting to reduce false accusations. A mandatory death sentence for the crime of ‘defiling the name’ of Muhammad makes false accusations a serious risk to non-Muslims; they are often used to settle personal grudges. The mob violence that sometimes follows an accusation poses a risk to whole Christian communities if one of their members is accused. If passed, the bill would impose penalties for false accusation and also make it necessary to prove that a person accused of defiling the name of Muhammad had done so intentionally. Pakistan has a secular legal system and an Islamic one based on sharia. According to the constitution, the Federal Shariat Court has the power to decide whether any of the country’s laws are ‘repugnant to the injunctions of Islam’ - the president must then ‘take steps to amend the law’.