We are passing through a painful epoch. A deep malaise has set in. There is a generalised decline of the economy, politics, ethics, morality, art, literature and culture. In a political spectrum littered with stale and deceitful leaders, Salmaan Taseer was a vivid and pleasant rarity. One could disagree with his economic and other policies, but at least he was bold and frank. His ghastly assassination was an insult upon injury for the already suffering and agonised masses of Pakistan. What is outrageous is the venomous condoning of this gruesome murder in the media and on the part of the clergy. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leadership has ended up attempting to appease this reactionary crusade. Its Federal Law Minister Babar Awan, who is also an Islamic televangelist, actually joined in the insidious chorus of the mullahs after Taseer had dared to challenge the so-called blasphemy laws under which the dictator Ziaul Haq had imposed the death sentence through a constitutional amendment during his tyrannical reign. The right wing religious parties have held mass rallies as if to endorse this bestiality. But the main support base for this religious bigotry is principally amongst a frustrated middle class riddled with crisis. The masses in general do not support fundamentalism as is perceived generally in the West. And the existence of a mass proletariat that has traditions of revolutionary struggle means that Pakistan is not going to fall into a Talibanised abyss. The main problem we face is the betrayal on the part of the traditional political and trade union leadership that has capitulated to reformism and adjusted to the dictates of imperialism and an aggressive capitalist onslaught. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the capitalist binge of the Chinese state, the main Left comprising pro-Moscow and pro-Beijing tendencies collapsed. This created a vacuum, which was filled by Islamic fundamentalists in collusion with US imperialism and the Pakistani state. Modern Islamic fundamentalism is the brainchild of John Foster Dulles, secretary of state under President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s. The rise of Mossadeq in Iran, Nasser in Egypt, the Baath Socialist Parties in Syria and Iraq and the massive support base of the Communist Party in Indonesia threatened imperialist interests in the so-called Islamic world. To counter and combat the rising socialist movements and the general swing to the left in these societies, the imperialists sponsored Islamic fundamentalist movements in these countries. This process had actually been kick-started after the defeat of Israel, Britain and France in the Suez War of 1956 when, with rising mass support, Nasser had crushed a joint attack on Egypt after he had nationalised the Suez Canal. In the Middle East, the imperialists revived the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen; in Pakistan it was the Jamaat-e-Islami and similar outfits appeared in Indonesia and elsewhere. They were heavily funded and the CIA and the US State Department covertly trained the fundamentalist vigilantes. In Indonesia, the Islamic fundamentalists carried out a massacre of 1.5 million communists and their families. Similar atrocities were committed in several other countries by these neo-fascist fundamentalist organisations at the behest of Washington. In the late 1970s, after the Afghan revolution of 1978, the main instrument of imperialist counter-revolution was once again these Islamic outfits. This reactionary insurgency to destabilise the left-wing government of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was initiated almost two years before the Russians intervened in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the real fight came during the revolutionary upheaval of 1968-69. In its aftermath, in the elections of 1970, the PPP with a socialist programme decisively defeated these forces of black reaction. Even in the army the young officers and the rank and file soldiers voted for the PPP and rejected the right wing. It was the failure of the reforms in a rotting capitalism that led to the spawning of these fundamentalists, when a severe crisis had been triggered by the capitalists who had been bruised by the reforms introduced by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The coup of 1977 and Bhutto’s judicial murder was the revenge of this ruling elite. The 11 years of the brutal Zia dictatorship was the punishment inflicted upon the masses for their daring to rise and attempt to overthrow this exploitative system. And it was during this period that the state institutions were systematically infiltrated with these fundamentalist bigots to crush the mass movements and the left wing. The imperialists were complicit in this manoeuvre. This process was neither halted nor reversed by any subsequent regime. After the departure of the US from the region in the early 1990s, these fundamentalist outfits were nurtured by the agencies of the state to promote their own strategic and financial gains. Now these fundamentalists have become a Frankenstein’s monster for the imperialists and a scourge for the masses in Pakistan. The mullahs frantically issue round-the-clock sermons and death fatwas from the mosque pulpits. Towns and villages have a large number of mosques, each with half a dozen blaring loudspeakers, but no hospitals or schools. The administration, infiltrated with religious fanatics, encourages these mullahs rather than stop the ever-blaring noise that pierces the calm and tranquillity of the countryside. This clerical conglomerate controlling the mosques and madrassas has become one of the largest financial cartels in the country. It is Pakistan’s vast black economy that finances them and gets protection in return from these overt and covert religious organisations. This orgy of fundamentalist terror has monetary interests and those investing in it seem to be gaining high levels of profitability. The state institutions infiltrated by this black capital also preserve and protect it. The ‘democratic regime’ of finance capital has failed to curb this menace. Rather, most politicians of the ruling class conveniently appease these obscurantist forces for their own political and financial gains. Nor can this state, its interests deeply embedded in this religious polity and economy, remove this tumour society suffers from. The alienation created by capitalist exploitation, poverty, price hikes, misery and deprivation creates further room for these hatreds, superstitions and prejudices in conditions of a lull in society and the absence of a movement of the toiling masses. Trotsky once described fascism as the distilled essence of capitalism. These neo-fascist outfits can only be defeated by the masses themselves. A mass revolutionary movement that is destined to overthrow this decaying system is the only force that can surgically remove this cancer from its roots and emancipate society from these dark forces of the past into a socialist future of freedom and prosperity. The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail.com