Salmaan Taseer is dead. He’s neither the first politician, first liberal, the first outspoken bullish pugnacious politician who was killed. Nor is he last. There were many, there will be more. He was the sitting governor of Pakistan’s biggest province and was assassinated by his own bodyguard.
Does Pakistan suffer today because of his death? Yes. Does it change anything on the ground? No.
He was slain because he called the notorious blasphemy law as black law. He stood up for a Christian woman who was accused of blasphemy and was sentenced to death by a local court. Taseer wanted his government to repeal the blasphemy law that was incorporated in the 1980s by the military dictator General Ziaul Haq. It was a legitimate demand. In his own words, “these are man made laws and men can correct this”.
These black laws will now be repealed or not? This does not change anything on the ground either.
Nothing will change on the ground because nothing changed a decade ago when a Christian cricket player on the national team was allegedly forced to convert. Nothing changed when pop singers one after another started denouncing their own careers and joined the elite mullah ranks. Not a thing changed when two boys were lynched publicly just last year. These were the obvious symptoms of a society turning intolerant, self-righteous, and violent. A society without the respect for law and order.
It changed nothing back then, it will not change anything now. Hence, the events that followed Salmaan Taseer’s gruesome murder are disturbing. These events have nothing to do with a religion, or its preaching, but everything to do with the mindset that has been developed over the years. Evidently, this mindset is irrespective of class. The jubilant response on Facebook and YouTube was not by the uneducated and madrassa clan. A Pakistani blogger summed it up well: “If you go through the profiles of Qadri supporters on Facebook, you’d think Justin Bieber was the cause of extremism in Pakistan.”
The killer’s overwhelming welcome at the courts by men who know how and why a law is made demonstrates that the liberals – a minority in Pakistan – have been reduced to an endangered species.
And that is what has changed. And that is what matters today on the ground in Pakistan.
Do a little math. The killer is a 26 year old man and hails from a semi-urban area. He joined the Elite force in 2003 which means he was 18 then. General Musharraf toppled a democratic government in 1999, and the killer must have been 14. And this is the age group that’s using the Internet, Facebook, YouTube and blogs more aggressively. This is the age group that went through a whole “moderate enlightenment” phase fully sponsored by Pervez Musharraf and shamelessly supported by George Bush for almost over a decade. And this is the group that has the street power in Pakistan. This is the group that is the future of Pakistan. Its mind has been infiltrated by private television, launched during Musharraf’s era. Instead of promoting freedom of speech, it promoted violence, illiteracy and conspiracy theories. It produced the “I-know-more-than-you-know-coz-I-like-that-anchor-and-you-dont-watch-that-show” minds, whereas before young men from the same age group used to extract influence from their family heads.
The dual game of the military government ten years ago, fully supported and encouraged by the US government, produced a whole generation that detests its own constitution and Western freedom of speech values. This generation is the raw material available to and exploited by religious groups, ready to kill and get killed. My philanthropist friend Manzur Ejaz believes that the right wing in Pakistan is organized and has ideological strength. It has been supported by the State machinery through an education system and infested state institutions, while its opposition lacks committed people, organization and a cause.
This sorry state of Pakistan is pretty much an example of Martin Niemoller’s ‘First They Came.’
They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
This existing situation has nothing to do with the drone attacks carried out today or the policy changed in favor of Pakistan. The ruling party was once considered a liberal group, but now its own members and sitting ministers publicly announced that they will shoot a blasphemer themselves. They align themselves with so-called “moderate” Muslim politicians like Imran Khan who have practiced Western values but sympathise with the Taliban.
This indicates that now the dominant political philosophies are right, center to right and very right groups. It has men that have a soft heart for fundamentalists. The absence of a left–because the representative parties or groups were systematically dismantled by military dictators–will bring more extremism.
Persons with liberal thoughts need protection, which requires some strategy as well as strength. It has to organize itself and build an anti-mullah manpower. It’s a war now, and decisions taken today will reflect the systems adopted in the future. And that will change everything on the ground.
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Crosspost: ThePakistanUpdate.com
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