Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Pakistan's Fanatics

Pakistan, we are assured by those who still trust in that country's ability to extricate itself from the current situation where a presumed relative minority of fundamentalist Islamists are overturning society, is not an Islamist-crazed state. That's hard to believe, on the record being played out before the eyes of the world. Where a passionate believer in democracy and her country's destiny, Benazir Bhutto, courageously returned to her country to lead it back to order and peace and good governance. And was assassinated for her beliefs.

Her father, who ruled as Pakistan's first leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party that he formed, was himself hung as a traitor to the country's values by General Muhammad Zia-al-Haq, but not before he had invested himself in funding to the detriment of the poverty-stricken in his country whom he promised to feed and house, the Muslim world's first nuclear investment. And it has been every government that has ruled modern Pakistan that has been responsible for tolerating the fanatical Islamists within, and making accommodation with them, including most notably General Pervez Musharraf and former President Nawaz Sharif.

There are few Pakistani politicians who will fearlessly, courageously, challenge the violent and bellicose Islamism of the country's mullahs for whom the blasphemy laws - helpfully and in good faith enshrined in law by the last of the imperial British overseers - are considered sacred. Given that the founder of Pakistan, who arranged the separation from India in 1947 envisioned for his fellow Muslims a secular state with a rational, thoughtful governing body, one might say that Mohammad Jinnah carelessly overlooked the necessity to withdraw that law before it became firmly entrenched.

Now, even though the judiciary and the political party now in power - but likely not for too much longer, since the fragility of its coalition governance is so evident - would like to re-write those laws to establish greater clarity to define the blasphemy laws, or withdraw them altogether, they dare not, lest they inflame an already incorrigible fundamentalist clergy and their loyal followers. Fifty thousand of whom marched through the streets to defend and celebrate the assassination of the governor of Punjab, insisting that his assassin represented a hero of Islamic honour.

Salman Taseer, the slain governor, knew very well the tenor of the political situation in his province and his country, but insisted bravely that he would attempt to amend the blasphemy laws which have been criminally manipulated to suit many causes, both religious and business-corrupt. With his untimely and perhaps predictable death, the PPP politician, Shehrbano Rehman, a former aide to Benazir Bhutto, who introduced a private member's bill to amend the blasphemy law after the death sentence of a Christian woman Aasia Bibi, has been threatened as the next 'target'.

This is the country that continues to viciously threaten India with dreadful violence, determined to assert dominance over Kashmir. This is the country whose North-West Frontier Provinces and Waziristan tribal areas host al-Qaeda and the Afghanistan Taliban, along with the more recent emergence of the Pakistani Taliban. This is the country that presents as an ally of NATO and Western powers, in whom the U.S. has asserted confidence of working together to destroy Islamist terrorism's appeal.

This is the country struggling with poverty among its masses, but diverting precious treasury to the military and its secret service which has long since been infiltrated by Islamists. This is the country that has been incapable of assisting the million internally displaced refugees from the effects of massive destructive, catastrophic flooding. This is a country where ignorance and lack of education and social opportunities afflict the teeming masses.

This is nuclear-weapons-owning Pakistan.

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posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, January 11, 2011

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