Daily Times

The recent cold-blooded assassination of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer on January 4 was a sad day for Pakistan. It was a sad day because a human life has been cut short. It is sadder still because his militant opponents have sought to kill a noble idea with him.

This is not to suggest that Salmaan Taseer was some moral philosopher with a grand vision. Indeed, he was an ordinary human being with extraordinary courage to keep pushing for the amendment of the country’s Penal Code with the provision of death penalty for blasphemy. His extraordinary courage is revealed when he refused to be cowed down by threats to his life that were real enough.

Whether or not he was consciously promoting the idea that religion — Islam in this case — and our shared humanity are not antithetical but the two sides of the same coin is not known. But, at a human level, by seeking to spare the life of a young Christian woman — and others like her, rightly or wrongly accused of blasphemy — by amendment of the relevant law, he was fostering unity in his strife-torn country by bridging an artificial gap between religion and common humanity.

The point is that when proponents of militant Islam seek to put their subjective interpretation of Islam above our shared humanity — with sanctity of human life as its core principle — it is time to reflect and bridge that gap before things go too far, if it has not already happened. And this is what Salmaan Taseer was doing in a practical way by promoting tolerance and co-existence. And with his death, that idea of the unity of religion — Islam — and our basic humanity has taken a terrible battering.

It is true that in electoral terms religious parties have never polled well in Pakistan, though it started to change in recent years when Islamist parties scored better than they had done before. Looking at the mass of people joining demonstrations hailing Mumtaz Qadri as a hero of sorts, it would seem that Pakistan has taken an about-turn in religious matters based on a perverted interpretation of Islam by those who profess to be its ardent followers. Worse still, many of the country’s lawyers, who played an important role in the downfall of General Pervez Musharraf and the restoration of democracy in the country, are now championing Qadri, offering their free services to defend him in the courts.

It is important to realise that this change has not happened overnight. It has been building up over many years. Even though Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, fought for a new homeland for the Muslims of the then Indian subcontinent, he wanted his new country to practice equality for all citizens, irrespective of their religious faith.

It was only in 1956 that under its new constitution, Pakistan was christened the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which is telling because from this period onwards Pakistan’s religious identity started to figure increasingly in the country’s politics.

At about the same time, Pakistan’s armed forces started to emerge as the country’s ‘saviour’ from the ‘vile and venal’ political rulers of the country. It was in 1958 that General Ayub Khan staged his military coup, setting an example for the subsequent chapters of the same, now familiar, story.

Another military dictator, Muhammad Ziaul Haq, who staged a coup in 1977 against Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had his political master hanged. Partly out of religious convictions and partly out of political compulsions, Zia gave Pakistan a decisive push in the direction of religious conservatism. The US unwittingly helped him in this project, as he became its major political ally to serve as a conduit for US arms supplies and financial assistance to the mujahideen fighting against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

In this way, Zia not only carved out an important political constituency in the country among the conservatives and religious extremists, but also gained significant international legitimacy in the western world. And in making his country the principal instrument of the US policy in Afghanistan, he was naturally rewarded with considerable US aid for his country.

Pakistan’s tragedy is that most of the US aid it received over the years has never been accounted for properly and there is not much to show for it in terms of Pakistan’s economic development. No wonder, its people are losing faith both in its political and military establishments, which, in any case, have overlapped, with the military playing a dominant and domineering role.

Zia was quite serious about giving Pakistan a distinct Islamic identity by seeking to bridge the gap between its existing institutions and Islamic injunctions. This was most noticeable in legal matters, as in the case of new blasphemy laws invoking death on those charged with it. And it is these laws Governor Salmaan Taseer was pushing to amend, with Aasia Bibi as a case in point.

It was under Zia that the lower and middle ranks of the armed forces started being radicalised in a religious sense. After all, he was both the armed forces chief and president of the country. And his example and new Islamic laws were bound to have an incremental effect on the army and other institutions of the country. It has now reached a point where Qadri could fire 27 shots at Governor Taseer without any of the killer’s colleagues in the security outfit rushing to the governor’s defence or nabbing the killer. Not only this. Even the high and mighty, like Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, have decided to drop the proposed amendment to the blasphemy law partly out of fear and partly out of apprehensions regarding the political consequences after watching the outpouring of support for Qadri. This would suggest that the Talibanisation of the country is proceeding faster than expected.

The militants have expanded their popular constituency; first, because they are increasingly emerging as the only alternative — however crazy that might seem. Second, they have instilled fear among the people, as well as among the country’s ruling establishment.

It would seem that Pakistan is at a crossroads. The only question is: has Pakistan reached the tipping point with Governor Taseer’s assassination? Things do not look very promising. But, at the end, only time will tell.

The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia