Pakistan’s radical Islamist elements Wednesday (Mar 2) assassinated yet another Minister, who was opposed to stringent blasphemy laws of the country. The Minister for Minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, was killed by gunmen as his vehicle was passing through a residential area of the federal capital, Islamabad. Motor-cycle born gunmen surrounded his car and trained their guns on him. He died on the spot.

A senior leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Bhatti was the only Christian in Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Gilani cabinet.  He is the second victim claimed by Islamist groups in the past two months- the first was Salman Taseer, Punjab governor on Jan 4; he was also killed in Islamabad.

" Liberals  have   long   been a minority force in Pakistan, reviled for importing “western” ideas and culture; now they are virtually an endangered species. "  After Taseer’s assassination, Bhatti had voiced fears for his life as he too vociferously supported the amendments proposed by Sherry Rehman, a close aide of Benazir Bhutto, to the blasphemy law.  She sought to dilute the stringent law after a court sentenced a Christian mother of five, Aasia Bibi, to death last November after holding her guilty of blaspheming in her Punjab village in June 2009.  

Under the pressure of religious lobbies, Prime Minister Gilani first distanced his government from the Sherry amendment and later got it dropped from the parliamentary agenda without even consulting the law maker. Neither the government nor the judiciary cared to pay heed to the farm hand’ plea that she was being victimized because of her faith. On November 29, 2010, the Lahore High Court directed the President to not pardon the 45-year old lady.

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are more stringent than similar laws in other Muslim countries like, for instance, Indonesia and Malaysia. The Pak law holds death sentence for anyone who insults Islam. Although no-one convicted under the blasphemy law has ever been executed, more than 30 accused have been lynched to death by angry mobs. And the law has been used to persecute minority faiths, according to the critics.  The assassinated minister Bhatti was among its prominent critics.

‘I was told that if I was to continue the campaign against the blasphemy law, I will be assassinated. I will be beheaded. But forces of violence, forces of extremism cannot harass me, cannot threaten me,’ he told BBC shortly after Governor Taseer was assassinated by one of his body guards, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri.  As the turn of events show, he paid with his life for defying the threats and for his efforts to reform the country’s blasphemy law.

Sherry Rehman is now made to live under tight security at her home in Karachi. She has been receiving death threats every half hour by e-mail and telephone, as she herself said in an interview. She believes the challenge thrown up by the Islamist radicals is a threat to the very existence of Pakistan.

‘If we are not up to face up to this very existential threat I think that that will swallow us whole eventually’, Sherry Rehman opines like many other moderate Pakistani liberals and cautions that ‘there’s a very clear and present danger to the fabric and soul of Pakistan’. Her party’s government is pre-occupied with the larger issue of political survival and has no time to face the existential threat beyond formal condemnations of assassinations and assassination attempts.  

Reports in local and foreign media speak of a climate of fear across Pakistan with the religious groups publicly hailing the self-confessed 26-year-old assassin of Salman Taseer. Street demonstrations have become a norm rather than an exception on Fridays, demanding the release of Mumtaz Qadri, who told the court that he was angered by Salman Taseer’s support to Aasia Bibi

Government has been promising punishment to Qadri but has not bothered to investigate whether Qadri acted alone or with the backing of a radical movement even after reports appeared that Governor Taseer could have been pumped more bullets as he was being carried to the hospital from the place of assassination. It is said that more than 40 bullet wounds were found on his body.

As Sherry Rehman says, the assassination of Taseer and Bhatti exposes the deep fissure that runs through Pakistan society. It also shows the dangerous abysses into which Pakistan is heading, making the founder of the nation of 160 million people squirm with unease in his grave.  Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a constitutionalist. He was secularist in his own right, who wanted Pakistan to advance as a progressive and liberal nation.

Gen Zia-ul-Haq gave an impetus to the religious forces during his rule in the eighties. The blasphemy law that says no proof is required for the crime is one of his decrees; his successors allowed it to remain on the statute book though death for blasphemy has little theological foundation, and contradicts fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution. Another Zia legacy is the anti-women Hudood laws. Benazir Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf had opportunities to undo at least some of the radicalization left behind by Gen Zia since both projected themselves as born liberals. But they did not and continued nurturing militancy as a geo-strategic tool. And contributed to furthering of fanaticism, extremism, and terrorism of all kinds, which is taking its toll today.

Intolerance from the religious right is nothing new in Pakistan; it has been encouraged by the State apparatus as a part of deliberate state policy. What is striking today is the shrinking space for secular forces.It is doubtful whether the two assassinations over a short span of two months that had taken place so soon after the third anniversary of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, will stir a debate  in the country. Equally doubtful is whether the liberal elements close ranks and summon the courage to take on the extremists and radicals who have been calling the shots.

Intolerance from the religious right is nothing new in Pakistan; it has been encouraged by the State apparatus as a part of deliberate state policy. What is striking today is the shrinking space for secular forces.

Liberals have long been a minority force in Pakistan, reviled for importing “western” ideas and culture; now they are virtually an endangered species, according to Declan Walsh, the Guardian correspondent in Islamabad.

Noted scientist Pervez Hoodbhoy, who teaches physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, echoes the same views. ‘Pakistan once had a violent, rabidly religious lunatic fringe. This fringe has morphed into a majority. It’s the liberals that are now the fringe…Europe’s Dark Ages have descended upon us’, he says.

By saying adieu to Shahbaz Bhatti so soon after bidding good-bye to Salman Taseer, Pakistan has buried its liberal dream.