Where is this frenzy driving us?

Salmaan Taseer did not commit blasphemy. We should get this straight. He was not a Gustakh-e-Rasool (insulter of the Prophet). He did not remotely commit or say anything falling in the category of what the most charged of believers take to be blasphemy. Yet in the name of the Prophet, whom we revere as the Last Messenger of God, he was gunned down by one of his guards. It is at the gates of such madness that we as a nation have arrived.
And if there can be anything worse, it is the reaction of assorted clerics, doctors of the faith and muftis of the media, who instead of condemning this act openly have uttered tongue-twisters and adopted convoluted postures which amount to justifying it. The road to hell is paved with such equivocations.
One of the media muftis pontificating on television when Taseer’s blood had hardly dried was heard saying that it was strange of the slain governor to have visited in prison someone convicted of blasphemy — a reference to the unfortunate Christian woman, Aasia Bibi. This amounted to saying that the governor was almost asking for what happened to him.
The other media gladiator was even more startling. He said that while we were sure to hear enough condemnation of the governor’s assassination not a word would be said of American atrocities in the war on terror. It is hard to beat this logic or this connection.
There are lunatics in every society, people on the edge holding the strangest of opinions…that the end of the world is nigh or the true messiah is at hand, etc. But here it is not the antics of a lunatic fringe on display, but prominent figures in the mainstream media making asses of themselves.
Then we talk of saving the Islamic Republic. With pontiffs like these injecting their share of refined folly into the national discourse, with no trace of embarrassment clouding the smooth flow of their eloquence, we get a fair idea of how the hill of redemption — trying to change the Republic’s suicidal ways — is not an easy one to climb.
And the thing to frighten any weak-hearted man out of his senses: the assassin, Mumtaz Qadri, was not acting out of any malevolence or sense of personal injury. He was acting not only in good faith but in what can only be described as the highest manifestation of good faith: according to his Islamic conscience which instructed him that Governor Taseer was a blasphemer of the Holy Prophet and thus unmistakably deserving of death.
Small wonder then that far from anything like remorse on his face, the expression he wore in police custody was almost beatific, as if he had just accomplished a deed worthy of the saints or the holiest of martyrs.
Any lone ranger can kill Martin Luther King or Robert F Kennedy. It was a Hindu bigot, guided by the highest of motives (according to his way of looking at the world), who shot and killed Mahatma Gandhi. Pakistan’s tragedy is that its holy zealots are not lone rangers but products, and now the instruments, of a mindset 30 years in the making: from Gen Ziaul Haq’s era and the time of the first Afghan ‘jihad’ down to the present, a mindset totally at odds with what gullible fools like us take the idea of Pakistan, as first mooted in 1947, to be.
It is wrong, therefore, to say that Mumtaz Qadri was acting alone. In the literal sense he may have been alone. But in the metaphorical or spiritual sense he was representing a state of mind, a fever of the brain, which has more and more Pakistanis in its grip. So it is hardly surprising if there should be people, and not a small number either, looking upon him not as a killer but a defender of the faith. Of the few text messages I have received most, to my growing dismay, have spoken of Taseer’s killing as a fate he richly deserved. Makes one think, doesn’t it?
Without going into the merits of the present anti-blasphemy law — one of Gen Zia’s many gifts to the nation, although it is only fair to say that it was later ratified by the 1985 Parliament — is it too much to ask Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry to look into a crucial aspect of judicial work at the level of our sessions courts? Why do lower-tier judges go out of their way to look for loopholes when dangerous terrorists are on trial, thus giving them the benefit of the doubt, and why do they close all loopholes and don spectacles of the utmost strictness when it comes to the trial of a poor Christian man or woman, usually the lowliest of the low, charged with blasphemy, on the flimsiest of evidence or the most dubious of motives?
Doubting Thomases in terrorism cases but unbending disciplinarians in blasphemy cases…a strange paradox is at work here: in the first instance, a keenness not to court the wrath of the extremist armies; in the second, a wish to earn merit by coming down hard on supposed blasphemers.
Also worth asking is another question: why do our holy fathers take such a narrow view of blasphemy? Hunger, poverty and injustice move them not. If the Islamic Republic is a living monument to anything it is to injustice, to the unfairness of life, to the vast and growing distance between rich and poor. But the clerical armies reserve their choicest artillery, their most incendiary fire and brimstone, for arcane and esoteric issues which have nothing to do with everyday life.
Riding the cause of such issues they flaunt their strength but forget the cry of the Caliph Omar (which I must have repeated a hundred times) that if a dog went hungry by the banks of the Euphrates he, the commander of the faithful, would be held to account on the Day of Judgment.
The anti-blasphemy law was not being amended. How many times has this to be repeated? No move of the kind was afoot in the halls of government or the corridors of parliament. Yet the clerical armies raised a hue and cry, issuing threats and denunciations, and calling for a national strike on December 31 to add fuel to the fires they had kindled.
On Fridays half the country is shut in any case, Friday being the Islamic Sabbath. Even so, the half which remains open was also closed, making the strike call a success even if few people paused to consider that it had been called over something which, for all practical purposes, was a non-issue.
But non-issue or not a climate was created…and exactly four days later Governor Taseer, whose one fault if we discount all others was an absence of cant and dissimulation when it came to speaking his mind on red-rag issues, had most of a Kalashnikov magazine in his body.
If Mumtaz Qadri pleads diminished responsibility, which of course he won’t, he will have grounds for doing so. He acted out his decision against the backdrop of a mood inspired or rather whipped up by (1) a clergy once again on the march and (2) media pundits who froth at the mouth when any religious trumpets are to be blown.
In a landscape marked by all kinds of uncertainties, the only certainty, the one thing constant, is the star of Islam. This is an Islamic land and will always remain so until the end of time. Why then do we conduct ourselves as if Islam is in danger? Pakistan may be in danger, Islam is not. If there is one thing all Muslims, with all their other differences, are agreed on, it is the finality of the prophet-hood of the Prophet Muhammad. No Muslim dare question this article of our creed. Why then do sections of the holy fathers make themselves hoarse over this issue? Like the lady in Hamlet, they protest too much — over a non-issue.
Will we ever get real, ever get out of the world of fantasy and make-believe? If Taseer’s killing makes us sit back and think he may not have died in vain. Although to hear some of the voices we are hearing it is hard to be optimistic on this score.

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