Daily Times

Salmaan Taseer’s assassination is an infinitely tragic event in so many ways; for his family and friends, for Punjab, for the PPP, for human rights, and perhaps above all for the much-beleaguered state of increasingly undemocratic and violence-prone Pakistan. That a politician could be killed for opposing what is obviously an unjust law is mind-numbing; that the killer would be praised by vast numbers of the religious right is demented. Intimidation, threats, calls to murder, this is what political life is about now in Pakistan. As always, violence only further emboldens cowards, who kill and threaten where they cannot reason and convince. Meanwhile, the government cowardly opposes any change to the Blasphemy law, once again hoping against all hope that appeasement will pacify the furious madmen who, literally, call the shots, when it so obviously has the exact opposite effect. Violence and cowardice seem to be the order of the day in Pakistan these days.

But one of the saddest and most revolting aspects of the assassination is the fact that the killer was Salmaan Taseer’s security guard, the very man entrusted with his life. South Asia already had the sad precedent of Indira Gandhi in 1984, when her Sikh bodyguards turned their arms against her, in retaliation for the Golden Temple assault. They, just like the smug Mumtaz Qadri, felt their narrow understanding of religion somehow gave them the right to take a life, and do (in)justice themselves. As if they were not themselves committing blasphemy when killing supposedly in the name of God. The crime itself — killing, killing in the name of God, and killing with a sense of good deed — is horrific as it is. But it is made worse yet by the betrayal.

Dante, in the ‘Divine Comedy’, placed traitors in the ninth, i.e. the last and deepest circle of hell. Of all the possible sins (including blasphemy), nothing deserves eternal damnation and its worst punishments as treason, he thought. Schopenhauer agreed, who made treachery the most evil of all moral evils. Its specificity is that it compounds the sin — it is a double sin. Not only do you commit a crime (the killing), but you commit the second crime of breaching the trust placed in you. Actually, you take advantage of the very trust to get in the position to commit the crime in the first place. Now trust is not just a random human feeling among others: it is the condition of possibility of all others. It is trust, in all its various depths (the trust in your closest friends and relatives is not the same as that in your colleagues, in your fellow citizens, or in your leaders), that allows human sociability, that makes it possible for us to even be together. Trust is the fundamental glue that allows for a society — any society — to exist, let alone prosper. Hobbes depicts the pre-political state of nature precisely as that of mistrust, where everyone watches their back in fear of being stabbed (or shot by a burst from a submachine gun, for that matter). In spite of the complete freedom enjoyed in the state of nature, human beings decide to form a political society, with all its own pitfalls and difficulties, because it at least allows for the possibility of an existence. Mistrust makes life literally impossible.

Which is why treason is the worst evil. Not simply in a moral sense: in almost every country across the globe, and for centuries now, “high treason” is legally considered the absolute worst crime. It makes sense: if trust is the condition of possibility of any human togetherness at all, then betraying it cannot be considered simply as a crime among others, but as the ultimate crime — the crime that makes all others possible. And indeed, a betrayal in essence shuts down any possibility of being together. J S Mill once stated that there is no pain in life equal to the betrayal of a friend; the reason being that, contrary to all other losses, a betrayal contaminates all your other relationships. This is the deepest crime committed by the traitor: he makes all other community impossible. Once betrayed, you can never trust again; everyone else is affected by the treason. After Mumtaz Qadri’s deed, all security guards will now be considered suspiciously, just like India banned all non-Hindu bodyguards after Indira Gandhi’s killing. All other friends are eyed with suspicion after the betrayal of just one. You might protest your innocence, you might legitimately claim that you are a “real” friend — to no avail; a heart once betrayed can no longer trust. Treason is the worst crime precisely because it infects everything else and condemns to death all other relationships.

In a way, Mumtaz Qadri’s betrayal of his vow as security guard is symptomatic of the new Pakistan. A Pakistan where the fundamental political trust, that glue which binds citizens together in a common will to build a nation, whatever differences there may be among them, the trust that makes you believe that the other citizen might disagree with you, but he will not kill you because of this disagreement, is fast disappearing. Pakistan is now a country where indeed, you have to watch your back, because who knows, you might actually get killed for dissenting — or not even that, you might get killed for no reason at all, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Mumtaz Qadri did not even look Salmaan Taseer in the eye when he shot him. He did not have the courage to face him; he did not have the courage to explain his betrayal because he has no courage at all. He is a coward, and a traitor: and this is the man praised by so-called religious people. Let him rot in the ninth circle of hell.

The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at sikander.amani@gmail.com