In Pakistan, Justifying Murder for Those Who Blaspheme

Big Don

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Monday, Mar. 21, 2011
In Pakistan, Justifying Murder for Those Who Blaspheme

By Aryn Baker / Islamabad Time Magazine EXCERPT:


"I believe in Jesus Christ who has given his own life for us," the doomed man said, staring straight into the video camera. "And I am ready to die for a cause." Shahbaz Bhatti had no hesitation in his voice as he responded to a question about threats from the Taliban and al-Qaeda. "I'm living for my community ... and I will die to defend their rights." It was his last answer in a four-month-old self-produced video that was to be broadcast in the event of his death. But the radicals had the final say. On March 2, Bhatti, Pakistan's Minister for Minority Affairs, was shot dead in Islamabad. Pamphlets scattered on the ground claimed the act for a new alliance of "the organization of al-Qaeda and the Punjabi Taliban" and asserted that other infidels and apostates would meet the same fate.
Bhatti's death had been foretold not just by himself but also in the nation's response to a previous assassination, that of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer on Jan. 4. Taseer, a self-made millionaire, had turned his largely ceremonial post into a platform for a campaign to amend Pakistan's blasphemy laws. Bhatti, the only Christian in the Cabinet, refused to be a token and swore to battle intolerance. Both men supported clemency for Aasia Noreen, a Christian woman who had been accused of blasphemy and sentenced to death. Taseer's stance on the issue infuriated a large part of the population that, thanks to religious leaders and school curriculums, believes that blasphemy is a sin deserving of execution. In the weeks leading up to his assassination, Taseer had been denounced at Friday prayers, excoriated in the media and largely abandoned by his Pakistan People's Party (PPP) for fears that his campaign would prove politically toxic. The witch hunt culminated in a bodyguard's pumping 27 rounds into his head and chest in the parking lot of a popular Islamabad shopping center.
Within hours of Taseer's death, telephone text messages celebrating his assassination made the rounds. "Justice has been done," read one. "If you love the Prophet, pass this on." A Facebook fan page for assassin Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri garnered more than 2,000 members before site administrators shut it down. Even the leaders of state-funded mosques refused to say funeral prayers for the slain governor. When Qadri was transferred to a local jail, he was garlanded with roses by hundreds of lawyers — the vanguard of a movement that in 2008 helped unseat a military dictator — offering to take on his case for free.
At his court appearance a few days later, Qadri told the judge that he believed in a Pakistan where loyalty to the Prophet eclipses all other rights. According to Taseer's daughter Shehrbano, her father "wanted an egalitarian society where open debate is protected and people are not killed for speaking out." And Bhatti dreamed of a nation true to founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah's vision, one where "you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship." Which vision prevails — Qadri's or Taseer and Bhatti's — will decide the future of the country.
The Roots of Extremism
It is not news that Pakistan has a lunatic fringe. What is disturbing is that after Taseer's murder, when the silent majority finally spoke up, it praised Qadri, not his victim. The public reaction exploded the myth of Pakistan's moderate Islam; Qadri belongs to a mainstream sect that routinely condemns the Taliban. "The Pakistan we saw in the wake of Taseer's killing is the real Pakistan," says Amir Muhammad Rana of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies. For the past two years, Rana's organization has conducted in-depth interviews with a broad spectrum of Pakistani citizens. "They might dress Western and eat at McDonald's, but when it comes to religion, most Pakistanis have a very conservative mind-set."
Pakistan's religious parties rarely do well at the polls — a fact often cited by those countering concerns that the country is going fundamentalist — but their street power is considerable. The furor over blasphemy appears to be partly in response to significant losses for the religious right in the 2008 elections. With the current government on the verge of collapse and popular sentiment against the PPP mounting, the religious parties are betting on significant gains if fresh elections are called. The case of Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor accused of killing two Pakistanis during what appears to have been a botched attempt to rob him, demonstrates the state of Pakistan's politics. It has gone virtually unremarked in Pakistan that Qadri, a confessed murderer, has been hailed as a national hero, while Davis — who, whatever his background, seems to have been acting in self-defense — is considered worthy of the death penalty. Over the past few weeks, street rallies led by the religious right have simultaneously called for the release of Qadri and the hanging of Davis.
Using religion to shore up political support is nothing new in Pakistan. Founded as a Muslim nation carved from a newly independent India in 1947, Pakistan has long struggled to unite a diverse population divided by language, culture and ethnicity. Islam was the common denominator, but Jinnah was famously enigmatic about its role in government.
Then, in 1977, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, an Islamist military general, overthrew the democratically elected government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was already retrenching his secular vision of Pakistan in an effort to win religious support. To further appease Muslim religious leaders, Zia-ul-Haq strengthened the colonial-era blasphemy laws, mandating that breaches should be answered by the death penalty. Since then, more than 1,274 cases have been lodged. As repeating blasphemous words could be considered to be perpetuating the crime, many cases are accepted without evidence, a system well primed for the pursuit of vendettas. That nobody has yet been executed by court order is hardly reassuring: 37 of the accused have been killed by vigilantes. (In 1929, Jinnah famously defended an illiterate carpenter who shot to death a Hindu publisher accused of blasphemy. The plea failed, and after the carpenter was hanged, Taseer's father was one of the pallbearers.)
The Uses of Blasphemy
When a nation rises up in support of a murderer instead of his victim, it's hard not to believe it is heading down a dangerous path.
End Excerpt
Remember, Christians are just as bad, if not worse, that's why you hear about those bastards in Vatican City whacking people for blasphemy and other violations...
(see my signature for further explanation)
 

girlbug2

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It takes a lot of courage to be a christian or anything other than a muslim in that part of the world.

What do I have to fear here in America? Not a heck of a lot it seems. I thank God for our freedoms.
 

fangjian

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...and I thank the constitution for my freedoms.
 

Ken Morgan

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Freedom backed by a constitution means nothing without a proper education. These people in Pakistan are uneducated hicks, for lack of a better word. Give them an education, get them out of the mire, and they will one day be a great nation.

People are no so enlightened that things like what happened in Pakistan happened within the memory of many in the US. Lynching’s of blacks, and abuse against Jews, these events are not ancient history.
 

granfire

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Be it religion or be it something else.
I admire the spirit of these people to put the one and only tangible thing they have on the line: their life.

Too many people walk the path of least resistance.
 

billc

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Ken morgan, there are highly educated people in that mix that feel the same way as the uneducated pakistanis. Osama Bin Laden didn't come from poverty, most of the high profile killers so far have come from middle to upper middle class families, quite a few from western developed countries. this is a problem.

From Big Don's Article:

When Qadri was transferred to a local jail, he was garlanded with roses by hundreds of lawyers — the vanguard of a movement that in 2008 helped unseat a military dictator — offering to take on his case for free.
 

Archangel M

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People are no so enlightened that things like what happened in Pakistan happened within the memory of many in the US. Lynching’s of blacks, and abuse against Jews, these events are not ancient history.

And they were also not nationally supported.
 

Archangel M

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Well, they had enough support to not face punishment...same thing

Perhaps within their individual states, but the Fed's and the general opinion swayed against them fairly substantially in the 60's.

This is in the same flavor of the "Yeah...well...what about the CRUSADES!!!!???!!" retorts IMO.
 

granfire

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Perhaps within their individual states, but the Fed's and the general opinion swayed against them fairly substantially in the 60's.

This is in the same flavor of the "Yeah...well...what about the CRUSADES!!!!???!!" retorts IMO.

Considering it took DECADES to bring them to justice...
 

Archangel M

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And was still not a "national" phenomena or widely supported on a national scale...
 
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Big Don

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Well, there is the cultural norms argument,
I don't care what constitutes honor or what brings shame to families over THERE... don't be bringing that **** attitude/thinking over HERE... you don't like how people live over HERE... then get your asses back over THERE!
Then there is the Trot out McVeigh canard:
Here's a simple test: If Nidal Malik Hasan had been a devout Christian with pronounced anti-abortion views, and had he attacked, say, a Planned Parenthood office, would his religion have been considered relevant as we tried to understand the motivation and meaning of the attack? Of course. Elite opinion makers do not, as a rule, try to protect Christians and Christian belief from investigation and criticism. Quite the opposite. It would be useful to apply the same standards of inquiry and criticism to all religions.
Heh. How cheesy. More Christians playing the victim card.

Who started calling for the regular debriefing of all Christians in the military when McVeigh acted?
Then there is the, they aren't Muslims bit:
Not these no, they aren't Muslims, as it says and you have quoted they are using it for the purposes of terror. Please don't shout at me I'm not in my dotage yet.
 

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