It came to me as great shock when I heard the news of Pakistani Punjabi governor Salman Taseer’s death. He was killed by his own bodyguard. Taseer’s death is the latest in a long series of killings and the second greatest of any big shot in the name of Islam after Benazir Bhutto in late 2007. At a posh and busy neighborhood of the Pakistani capital, Mumtaz Qadri who was Taseer’s guard from the elite commando police service shot the governor with a burst totaling 27 rounds from his service assault rifle because he wanted to avenge Taseer’s blasphemous act(s) such as campaigning to save a Christian Punjabi woman who is sentenced to death by a district Judge in Punjab for blasphemy also, and demanding country’s government to revise the said law and for other legal protections for minorities in Pakistan even Taseer’s comments “black law” for Pakistan’s blasphemy law. Subsequently to the governor’s intervention, the case has been held with High Court in Lahore.
The woman’s case has been very controversial for past recent months after Taseer began personally taking part in its conclusion. There had been a strong opposition against Taseer in Pakistan by a majority of people disagreeing his motive and demanding the blasphemer woman hanged. For so many times Taseer had been threatened by different religious factions in Pakistan that if he doesn’t stay away from the case or to try to save the accused woman, he was to be killed as by doing so he himself would be treated as a blasphemous offender. As the destiny would have it, the determined and outspoken Salman Taseer paid for his so called “blasphemy” with his life just in line with the so called “blasphemy law” Section 295 C of the Pakistan Penal Code.
It is reported that the “killer guard” named Mumtaz Qadri, after shooting the governor down, dropped his rifle and surrendered to the stunned fellow guards on duty at the crime scene begging to not to be shot on the spot but to be caught alive. He looked very confident, calm and above all proud. Facing the television cameras while chained under custody he frequently smiled like a victor and was not looked uncertain about his future. Quite regretfully but not surprisingly this tragic incident and the result subsequent to it is joyously appreciated by a majority of ordinary Pakistanis, the Mullahs and other forums. Almost all religious factions in Pakistan have hailed the killer as a hero of Islam and are active to save him from any secular judgment and have him clear from the court. Not only Mullahs, but thousands from other groups such as lawyers, police, students et cetera want Qadri be released immediately. Many lawyers have offered to defend him during trials for free. He was celebrated and welcomed by lawmakers when arrived for first appearance before the judiciary. While the state authorities seem to have no personal or official effect of the governor’s murder; as evident from the silence of the most, a halfhearted interest and reaction to the incident however the country’s hierarchy is much disturbed about the security of the others. Many politicians have changed their security details and replaced those guards found with least Islamic posture mostly the bearded men. When I stepped into a mosque in Karachi’s Saddar area for this Friday prayers, the first instance there for me was the voice of the Imam over the loudspeaker addressing to men there the issue of the blasphemy. Some points of the Imam were,
“Those who commit any vulgarity towards the Prophet Muhammad must be killed, and killing such blasphemers is commanded by Prophet Muhammad himself. The liberals are not right to call us illiterate and extremist. Whatever done (with Governor) or to be done with the (Christian woman) is right by the Islamic laws and we must do the needful at any cost.”
Hearing such typical provocative notions I was not moved by any means because nothing was new to me. In Pakistan, everybody is free to say and do anything; and the law only affects the poor. This is a country where from top to bottom majority is corrupt and except a very few, those who are not corrupt… haven’t had a chance to go! In such an environment most of things happen badly. Uncertainty, poverty, oppression and insecurity have caused mental frustration and above all have sparked a tendency of intolerance. This kind of restlessness is the reason behind all of today’s troubles destroying the trust and image of Pakistan in international view and in view of most of Pakistanis also. There has been a trend developed among the people that to make the others feel and to draw attention, one has to act really odd. Those who are to rise for the right have found a much effective way to make an impact upon the society by violent reactions. Riots and killings have become a weekly event and a slightest undesired thing is enough to invite a big disaster. There have been many incidents in past recent times regretfully happened in Pakistan’s once calm society. Though these are cruel and deserve no reiteration but it’s necessary to remind the reader of such crimes identical in nature and causes.
1: Wednesday, September 03, 2008; KARACHI: People captured two dacoits in Buffer zone area of Karachi, brutally thrashed them and set them on fire and according to Edhi sources, both were dead on the spot.
2: Saturday, May 17, 2008; KARACHI: People captured two dacoits in Five Star Chowrangi area of Karachi, brutally thrashed them and set them on fire. The police saved the dacoits from the angry mob and transferred them to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.
3: A brilliant and vibrant women right activist and sitting Punjab provincial minister Zille Huma Usman was assassinated by a fanatic Mullah during a public meeting in Gujranwala in 2007. The culprit was caught and produced on TV later; stating that he killed the woman because she was dressed inappropriately and also said that women should not be involved in politics.
The man had earlier murdered seven women described in the press as ‘call girls’ in Gujranwala and Lahore. He was arrested once and confessed to killing the ‘sinful women’; he was let off after one year because of lack of evidence but, more accurately, because of religious support. His patrons, according to the police, had “paid off” the relatives of the killed and been reprieved under ‘Islamic’ laws. There is nothing new in this. Anybody who knows the decade of religious mayhem in Karachi knows how criminals are protected from punishment by powerful patrons. He was previously held in 2002 in connection with the killing and mutilation of four “prostitutes”, but was never convicted due to lack of evidence.
4: SUKKUR: A woman in Sukkur was tied to a tree and her father-in-law and brothers-in-law set the dogs on her over allegations of “karo kari” or defiled family honour.
5: In Sialkot, Pakistan, people tried to take justice in their own hands by teaching a lesson to two brothers, a bit too brutally, for injuring four people at a cricket match.
The incident took place when two brothers ended up in a brawl in a local cricket match and they ended up injuring four people. The charged mob got out-raged and started beating the two brothers. The beating got so brutal that the two brothers lost their lives and all the people of Sialkot considered it a lesson well taught. There was even a police officer present at the event but he did nothing to stop the beating.
6: From The Guardian, Monday, September 1, 2008:
“Three teenage girls have been buried alive by their tribe in a remote part of Pakistan to punish them for attempting to choose their own husbands, in an “honour” killing case. After news of the deaths emerged, male politicians from their province, Baluchistan, defended the killings in parliament, claiming the practice was part of “our tribal custom”.
The girls, thought to have been aged between 16 and 18, were kidnapped by a group of men from the Umrani tribe. They were driven to a rural area and then injured by being shot. Then, while still alive, they were dragged bleeding to a pit, where they were covered with earth and stones…
However, six weeks after the deaths, no one was arrested amid claims of a cover-up. According to several accounts, Baluchistan government vehicles were used to abduct the girls, and the killing was overseen by a tribal chief who is the brother of a provincial minister from the ruling Pakistan People’s party. Some reports said that two older relatives of the girls had tried to intervene, but they too were shot and buried with the girls while still alive…with a presidential election on September 6, one in which Baluchistan’s provincial parliament would be strongly relied on to deliver votes, action that would antagonize the region’s politicians was highly unlikely. In Pakistan’s national parliament, an MP from Baluchistan, Israrullah Zehri, said on Friday that “this action was carried out according to tribal traditions”, a view backed up by some other male lawmakers, who attacked a woman senator who had raised the case. Umrani, a provincial minister, has admitted that the girls were buried alive but denied the involvement of his brother. An editorial, published in Pakistani daily The News said: ‘surely, the government should be seeking the murderers, not protect [them] through some dark conspiracy of silence. The fact the act was ‘kept quiet’ means the government sympathizes with such doings.’”
From The News, Thursday, January 01, 2009:
The year 2008 also saw two cruel incidents of violence that included the burial of five women alive in Nasirabad district of Baluchistan and throwing of Tasleem Solangi, an eight-month pregnant woman, in front of hungry dogs in Khairpur district of Sindh.
While with many advantages of the rapid growth of the media in Pakistan there have been many drawbacks of it as the media has been inflicting anguish upon the people namely it has caused great terror, depression and hatred to the people’s mind. The media in Pakistan has failed to perform responsibly and with ethics or limitations of public broadcasting. Most of the people depend upon television news slides updating every minute hence clips and photographs of bomb blasts, firefights, killings, corpses, blood and riots leave behind a great fright and mental frustration. The government has not yet made or enforced any regulations for media broadcasting of such sensitive content.
Another recent shock was a typical cleric in Peshawar who offered Pakistani Rupees 500,000 to anybody who kills the blasphemer woman Aasia Bibi during an open public rally. The news arrived on all Pakistani media with video clips of the scene in which the said Mullah cleric made his speech vehemently. An article by Akhtar Amin on allvoices.com said,
PESHAWAR: A Jamaat-e-Islami-affiliated cleric on Friday offered Rs 500,000 reward for anyone who kills Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy. “I will give Rs 500,000 to a person who killed Aasia,” the prayer leader of the historic Masjid Mohabbat Khan, Maulana Yousaf Qureshi told a JI protest rally organised against calls for amendments in the blasphemy law and Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer’s struggle to have the woman pardoned. The cleric also appealed to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to kill Aasia. He asked the group to carry out the killing instead of bombing other places. “To kill the woman is a service to the religion in a real,” he said.
Governor Salman Taseer’s tragic death has also caused a strong wave of criticism and opposition against deadly Islamic extremism in Pakistan which has already taken so many lives. The responses from local and international sources are with strong grief and condemnation of Pakistan’s helpless government, lawless environment plus an awfully illiterate and devastatingly Islamist society. It is quite shocking for me to see that no proper response by the government or the intellectuals in Pakistan is made in Pakistan. Many are unwilling even to say something about Taseer’s case and the fate of his assassin. All the Imams and other Islamic scholars had condemned Taseer, had refused to lead Taseer’s farewell (funeral) prayers and warned those who have some sympathy towards him; even the Christian federal minister of minorities of Pakistan named Shahbaz Bhatti is not spared by Islamist groups. Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) reports the following,
Terrorist Groups Raise Aim: “Eliminate Minister Bhatti”
ISLAMABAD/Pakistan, Dec. 06, 2010, 09:30 Hrs: (Agenzia Fides)
The Islamic terrorist organization “Lashkar-e-Toiba”, one of the largest in Southern Asia, and other Taliban groups have launched a “fatwa” (an official proclamation) against the Minister for Religious Minorities, the Catholic Shabhaz Bhatti. Reliable sources in Pakistan inform Fides that the minister is now being targeted by militants. He has become a “legitimate objective” and “may be killed for being an accomplice to the blasphemy.” The proclamation is motivated by Bhatti’s commitment to the revision of the blasphemy law.
The Minister had already received warnings and threats. The radical organization “Majlis Ahrar-e-Islam”, in recent days had told him to “keep your mouth shut and do not criticize the blasphemy law.” Months ago, the religious leader Ahmed Mian Hammadi had accused him of blasphemy and threatened him with “decapitation”. The position of the Minister in the case of Asia Bibi and his real effort to carry through a draft revision of the law have generated, in a growing climate of intolerance, the new “fatwa” by Taliban terrorist groups.
We Pakistanis live helplessly in a lawless country. Our government is corrupt, people are bitter and hostile. Nobody trusts nobody and Pakistan is defined by extremists, outlaws and power-hungry politicians. And in my personal view, if this anarchy continues to flourish even Pakistan’s armed forces’ integrity is in doubt when guards have become assassins. The dangerously growing Islamic extremism and societal disorder is enough for thinkers to alarm the explosion of a “time bomb” one day surely and anybody can be a victim. In my view this constantly growing anarchy in an illiterate society is a gathering storm inevitable to unleash one day and Pakistan’s rotation could possibly be worst than the bloody French Revolution of 1799.
Only history will be able to define Salman Taseer’s case and its consequences truly. Adil Najam at pakistaniat.com “Deadly Intolerance: Punjab Governor Salman Taseer Killed (1946-2011)” posted on January 4, 2011 has said the following very appropriately in his article,
Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri may have pulled the trigger but let us all hang our head in shame today because Salman Taseer was killed by the intolerance, the hatred, the extremism, the vigilantism, the violence and the Jahalat that now defines our society. He was killed by the unchecked abundance of false sanctimony where custodians of morality have been breathing fire and instigating violence. Each one of us, including his own party, should be ashamed today for having tolerated the pall of intolerance that has eventually gunned down this man. Today’s Pakistan is defined by Mumtaz Hussain Qadris. They exist all around us. And it is all of us who tolerate them and their intolerance. It is this tolerance of intolerance that kills.
Today, it claimed yet one more victim.
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