The cost of cowardice
By Huma Imtiaz
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 - 6:17 PM
Share
In December 2010, frustrated, irate, and depressed at the uproar around the case of Aasia Bibi and the reticence of the Pakistani government in amending the Blasphemy Laws that had condemned her to death, I interviewed Pakistan's Federal Minister for Minorities and the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP) national assembly member Shahbaz Bhatti on the telephone. Bhatti, the man responsible for protecting Pakistan's minority groups, told me, "Many people are facing death threats and problems. They're in prison and are being killed extra-judicially. This law is being misused." Bhatti had just been named by President Zardari as the head of a committee to discuss the country's blasphemy laws. "They have their own opinion and they are free to express it, we have our own," Bhatti calmly replied to a query about the stance taken by the religious right-wing against amending the Blasphemy Laws, or pardoning Bibi.
Perhaps Bhatti himself didn't know that three months later that "right" would take the shape of an assassin's bullets that claimed his life outside his Islamabad residence.
Nearly two months ago, Punjab province governor Salmaan Taseer was gunned down in a similar fashion at the hands of his police guard, and for nearly identical reasons: supporting amendments in the Blasphemy Laws, denouncing their use as a tool of persecution and highlighting Aasia Bibi's plight. But while the responsibility for the attacks have been claimed by different people -- in Bhatti's case by the Taliban and al Qaeda who have sworn to kill all those who want to change the Blasphemy Laws, in Taseer's case by the guard Mumtaz Qadri who claimed he was killing a blasphemer, both murders have highlighted the Pakistan People's Party's failure in safeguarding fundamental rights: the right of expression and the right of freedom of religion. Instead, they have ceded all possible ground to the religious right-wing, giving a whole new meaning to the term "capitulation."
Since November, faced with keeping a fragile coalition together, and unwilling to engage in a public discourse on a set of laws that has been used to persecute Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the PPP has chosen instead to back down on the stance on protecting minorities that it had adopted prior to the elections held in 2008. Instead of cracking down on those inciting murder against Salmaan Taseer and National Assembly members Sherry Rehman and Shahbaz Bhatti or demanding that provincial governments take action against those issuing fatwas against the trio, it chose to disband the committee set up to discuss the Blasphemy Laws, announce that Aasia would not be pardoned, and that the laws would not be changed.
Religious Affairs Minister and PPP National Assembly member Khursheed Shah said that the bill introduced by Rehman proposing amendments in the Blasphemy Laws "had nothing to do with the government." Interior Minister and PPP Senator Rehman Malik said he would shoot any blasphemer himself. Law Minister and PPP National Assembly member Babar Awan recommended that the Blasphemy Laws not be changed. And even as Bhatti's body awaits burial, the PPP has yet to announce that it will take any decisive action on the core issue that led to Bhatti's untimely death. Every time the PPP buries its head in the sand, it shows clearly its moral cowardice and abandons those who raise a voice against injustice.
Bhatti's death is not the death of reason, or liberalism, or freedom of expression -- that was buried when Taseer was laid to rest in Lahore in January. This is just the beginning of a new era in Pakistan, where, like the Taliban have vowed: they will kill each of those that dares raise their voice. And while one can blame extremist forces for being responsible for the attacks, it is time those that rule the country take a long, hard look at themselves in the mirror, and realize that their hands are stained with blood. Bhatti has paid the highest price, and his crime was not just his bravery, but for being part of a political party that is now excelling in abandoning its own.
Huma Imtiaz works as a journalist in Pakistan and can be reached at huma.imtiaz@gmail.com
JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images
EXPLORE:AFPAK, SOUTH ASIA, AFPAK CHANNEL, CULTURE, DEMOCRACY, EDUCATION, FREEDOM, HUMAN RIGHTS, PAKISTAN, POLITICS 
How absolutely terrible. Pakistan is a failed state and pretending otherwise is a waste of time. My heart goes out to all those minorities who are left to fend for themselves now, because I don't think there's anyone still alive who is willing to defend them against this absurd "blasphemy law". And my heart also goes out to intelligent people like Mr Imtiaz here who must watch their country descend even further into chaos.
situation from which no exit is in sight
At a time when winds of change have been sweeping across many Islamic countries with calls for greater freedom and democracy, winds of hatred continue to sweep across Pakistan.
How can one save Pakistan from the clutches of Islam of the most extreme kind when the assassin of Taseer was not condemned as a murderer, but was hailed as a saviour of Islam by some sections of the population, including lawyers?
One cannot hope for any salvation for Pakistan from these winds of hatred unless there is a mass uprising to break the stranglehold of these elements over the society and the State. Pakistan is a State governed by fear---not the fear of despots, but the fear of the irrational clergy and even more irrational extremist organisations. Unless the people are able to rid themselves of this fear and come out in the streets against these organisations, the winds of hatred will continue to blow across the country.
Unfortunately, Pakistan is a country where liberalism is merely a talking point in the drawing rooms of the elite and not a rallying cry for protests in the streets against the irrational and extremist elements. It is a gloomy situation from which no exit is in sight.
Fundamentalist Islamic State of Pakistan
In spite of all the efforts by Western news media to paint Pakistan as a ‘moderate Islamic society’, fact remains that Pakistani State has been ‘extremist’ from its inception when first Pakistani prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan declared that ’Pakistan has been created for Muslims and so no other religious minority has a right to live in Pakistan’ and then initiated policies that resulted in exodus of all religious minorities, reducing Pakistan’s minority population from 22% in 1947 to 2% by 1952.
The main-stream educational system in Pakistan is radicalized by Islamic teaching that projects Islam as the only savior in the world. Pakistan is suffering from ‘Saudization’ of its society by the education system that was revised in 1976 by the act of its parliament that, like Saudi Arabia’s system, provides an ideological foundation for violence and future jihadists. It demands that Islam be understood as a complete code of life, and creates in the mind of a school-going child a sense of siege and embattlement by stressing that Islam is under threat everywhere.
The promotion of militarism in Pakistan’s so-called “secular” public schools, colleges and universities had a profound effect upon young minds. Militant jihad became part of the culture on college and university campuses. Armed groups flourished, they invited students for jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan, set up offices throughout the country, collected funds at Friday prayers and declared a war which knew no borders.
Not long ago, Pervez Hoodhbhoy, a professor in an Islamabad University wrote the following:
‘For three decades, deep tectonic forces have been silently tearing Pakistan away from the Indian subcontinent and driving it towards the Arabian peninsula. This continental drift is not physical but cultural, driven by a belief that Pakistan must exchange its South Asian identity for an Arab-Muslim one. This change is by design. Twenty-five years ago, the Pakistani state used Islam as an instrument of state policy. Prayers in government departments were deemed compulsory, floggings were carried out publicly, punishments were meted out to those who did not fast in Ramadan, selection for academic posts in universities required that the candidate demonstrate a knowledge of Islamic teachings and jihad was declared essential for every Muslim. Today, government intervention is no longer needed because of a spontaneous groundswell of Islamic zeal. The notion of an Islamic state – still in an amorphous and diffused form – is more popular now than ever before as people look desperately for miracles to rescue a failing state.’
(4)
HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE