As Pakistan has embraced the culture of religious extremism and political violence with seeming acceptance and frightening rapidity in recent years, the news of the assassination of high public figures in that country does not shock any more. The slaying in broad daylight of Shahbaz Bhatti, minister for minorities and the only Christian in the Pakistan government, just outside his home in Islamabad as he was driving to attend a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday morning, appears a logical consequence of the pusillanimous attitude adopted by the government and the state in Pakistan in dealing with religious fanatics, in the process permitting them to enlarge their constituency.
When the high-profile liberal PPP leader, newspaper magnate and Punjab governor Salman Taseer was killed by one of his bodyguards, Malik Mumtaz Qadri, on January 4, the assassin was feted by tens of thousands in different parts of the country. The lawyers of Lahore, who in 2007 appeared to be the leaders of a liberal civil society push to oust former dictator Pervez Musharraf, showed up in strength at the high court to cheer Qadri and would later shower flower petals on him during court appearances. But the top men of the ruling party and high functionaries of the government, who should have defended a slain party colleague at least in death, were too afraid even to show up for his funeral. When the present government took power, it had declared its support to reforming the country’s blasphemy law, a dangerous entity in the statute book that is routinely used in Pakistan to hound religious minorities. Mr Taseer was an advocate of scrapping this law and paid for his views with his life. After his killing, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani meekly declared his government had no intention of meddling with the legislation. Mr Bhatti’s aim was less ambitious than the Punjab governor’s. He only sought reform in the Zia-era law, which was one of the building blocks of casting an Islamic state into an Islamist state, one in which political Islam is promoted. A pamphlet at the site of his shooting indicated that some variety of Taliban from Punjab sought “credit” for the murder. The Prime Minister and other PPP notables absented themselves from the funeral, afraid this might suggest they are sympathetic to the cause the late minorities minister espoused. So did the top brass of the military. The message is clear enough. The government is too afraid to do anything other than allow the Islamists a clear run. In the circumstances, is it any wonder that Sherry Rahman, who not long ago was a Cabinet minister in this government is running for cover and went underground right after the Taseer assassination? She had moved a private member’s bill in Parliament seeking to jettison the blasphemy law.
Mr Bhatti was not a political heavyweight. He was a relative newcomer to public affairs. His killing is unlikely to cause even a ripple when nothing much happened by way of action from the government’s side after the shooting of Mr Taseer. Indeed, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto some three years ago is even more instructive. A government which may not have come to power but for the massive sympathy wave generated after her assassination by jihadists, who appear to have been in cahoots with the military for this particular execution, has barely moved to bring the guilty to justice. The irony is that Ms Bhutto’s widower is now President of Pakistan.
As the state retreats from public space, and continuously appeases Islamist elements, it yields more ground to them. The government in Pakistan is weak, listless and ineffective. This further emboldens the extremists. As they rise, so does decline the prospect of long-term stability and peace in South Asia. The ascendance of Islamists in Pakistan bodes ill for Afghanistan and India and endangers the wider region.