Post- Taseer, America's 2 major newspapers - The New York Times and The Washington Post are shocked to discover a new Pakistan that the West has not bargained for:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/world/asia/11pakistan.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all Pakistan Faces a Divide of Age on Muslim Law Aamir Qureshi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Lawyers rallied for Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on Thursday. By CARLOTTA GALL<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/carlotta_gall/index.html?inline=nyt-per> Published: January 10, 2011 *ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Cheering crowds have gathered in recent days to support the assassin who riddled the governor of Punjab with 26 bullets and to praise his attack — carried out in the name of the Prophet Muhammad — as an act of heroism. To the surprise of many, chief among them have been Pakistan’s young lawyers, once seen as a force for democracy. * *Their energetic campaign on behalf of the killer has caught the government flat-footed and dismayed friends and supporters of the slain politician, Salman Taseer, an outspoken proponent of liberalism who had challenged the nation’s strict blasphemy laws. It has also confused many in the broader public and observers abroad, who expected to see a firm state prosecution of the assassin. * *Instead, before his court appearances, the lawyers showered rose petals over the confessed killer, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, a member of an elite police group who had been assigned to guard the governor, but who instead turned his gun on him. They have now enthusiastically taken up his defense. * *It may seem a stark turnabout for a group that just a few years ago looked like the vanguard of a democracy movement. They waged months of protests in 2007 and 2008 to challenge Pakistan’s military dictator after he unlawfully removed the chief justice. * *But the lawyers’ stance is perhaps just the most glaring expression of what has become a deep generational divide tearing at the fabric of Pakistani society, and of the broad influence of religious conservatism — and even militancy — that now exists among the educated middle class. * *They are often described as the Zia generation: Pakistanis who have come of age since the 1980s, when the military dictator, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, began to promote Islam in public education and to use it as a political tool to unify this young and insecure nation. * *Today, the forces he set loose have gained such strength that they threaten to overwhelm voices for tolerance in Pakistan’s feeble civilian government. They certainly present a nagging challenge for the United States. * *Washington has poured billions of dollars into the Pakistani military to combat terrorism, but has long neglected a civilian effort to counter the inexorable pull of conservative Islam. By now the conservatives have entered nearly every part of Pakistani society, even the rank-and-file security forces, as the assassination showed. The military, in fact, has been conspicuously silent about the killing. * *“Over time, Pakistani society has drifted toward religious extremism,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political and defense analyst from Lahore. “This religious sentiment has seeped deep into government circles and into the army and police at lower levels.” * *“The lower level are listening to the religious people,” he said. * *Indeed, the Pakistan of today, and the brand of Islam much of the nation has embraced, is barely recognizable even to many educated Pakistanis older than the Zia generation. Among them is Athar Minallah, 49, a former cabinet minister and one of the leaders of the lawyers’ protest campaign against Gen. Pervez Musharraf<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/pervez_musharraf/index.html?inline=nyt-per>in 2007 and 2008. * *Mr. Minallah studied law at Islamic University in Islamabad from 1983 to 1986, and the first lesson any student learned in his day was that the preservation of life was a pillar of Islamic law, he said. * *But under General Zia in the 1980s, the government began supporting Islamic warriors to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the Indian control of Kashmir, and the syllabus was changed to encourage jihad. The mind-set of students and graduates changed along with it, Mr. Minallah said. * *That change is now no more apparent than among the 1,000 lawyers from the capital, Islamabad, and the neighboring city of Rawalpindi, who have given their signed support for the defense of Mr. Qadri, who has been charged with murder and terrorism. * *Their leader is Rao Abdur Raheem, 30, who formed a “lawyers’ forum,” called the Movement to Protect the Dignity of the Prophet, in December. The aim of the group, he said, was to counter Mr. Taseer’s campaign to amend the nation’s strict blasphemy laws, which promise death for insulting the Prophet Muhammad. * *In interviews, Mr. Raheem and six of his colleagues insisted they were not members of any political or religious party, and were acting independently and interested only in ensuring the rule of law. * *All graduates of different Pakistani universities, they insisted they were liberal, not religious conservatives. Only one had religious training. They said they had all taken part in the lawyers’ protest campaign in 2007 and 2008, and that they were proud that the movement helped reinstate the chief justice. * *Yet they forcefully defended Mr. Qadri, saying he had acted on his own, out of strong religious feeling, and they denied that he had told his fellow guards of his plans in advance. He was innocent until proved guilty, they said. They have already succeeded in preventing the government from changing the court venue. * *In their deep religious conviction, and in their energy and commitment to the cause of the blasphemy laws, they are miles apart from the older generation of lawyers and law enforcement officials above them. * *“I felt this is a different society,” said one former law enforcement official when he saw the lawyers celebrating Mr. Qadri. “There is a disconnect in society.” * *The former security official, who has worked in fighting militancy and who requested anonymity because of his work, said that within just four hours of the killing, 2,500 people had posted messages supporting Mr. Qadri on Facebook<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/facebook_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org>pages. * *Mass rallies championing him and the blasphemy laws have continued since then. * *This conservatism is fueled by an element of class divide, between the more secular and wealthy upper classes and the more religious middle and lower classes, said Najam Sethi, a former editor of The Daily Times, a liberal daily newspaper published by Mr. Taseer. As Pakistan’s middle class has grown, so has the conservative population. * *Besides his campaign against the blasphemy laws, it was Mr. Taseer’s wealth and secular lifestyle that made him a target for the religious parties, Mr. Sethi said. * *“Salman had an easygoing, witty, irreverent, high-life style,” he said, “so the anger of class inequality mixed with religious passion gives a heady, dangerous brew.” * *Government officials, analysts and members of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the secular-leaning party to which Mr. Taseer belonged, blame the religious parties and clerics who delivered speeches and fatwas against Mr. Taseer for inciting the attack. On Monday, Mr. Qadri, who confessed to the killing, provided a court with testimony saying he was inspired by two clerics, Qari Hanif and Ishtiaq Shah. * *The police say they are now seeking the clerics for questioning, but with the growing strength of the conservative movement on the streets, religious leaders — even those who incite violence and terrorism — are nearly untouchable to the authorities and are almost never prosecuted. * *The blasphemy law has been condemned by human rights groups here, who say it has been used to persecute religious minorities, like Christians, and on Monday, Pope Benedict XVI<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/benedict_xvi/index.html?inline=nyt-per>called on Pakistan to undo the law. But the law has become an opportunity for religious parties looking to whip up public sentiment, Mr. Sethi said. * *A dark presence in the background is the military establishment, which has sponsored the religious parties for decades, using them as tools to influence politics and as militant proxies abroad. The military also has a heavy influence on much of Pakistan’s brash media, which fanned the flames of the blasphemy issue with sensationalist coverage. * *“Democracy has brought us a media that is extremely right-wing, conservative,” Mr. Sethi, 62, said. “Most are in their 30s and are a product of the Zia years, of the textbooks and schools set by the Zia years, which are not the sort of things that we were taught.” * *“The silence of the armed forces is ominous,” Mr. Sethi added. * *Indeed, whether on the military or civilian side, the government has failed to act forcefully on the case at every stage, the former security official said. Whether through fear or lack of policy, it has done little to challenge the ideology behind the attack or the spreading radicalism in Pakistani society. * *“The entire state effort has been on the capture and kill approach: how many terrorists can you arrest and how many can you kill,” the former security official said. “Nothing has been done about the breeding ground of extremism. * *“Unless the government does something serious and sustained,” the official warned, “we are on a very dangerous trajectory.” * *Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, and Waqar Gillani from Lahore, Pakistan.* ---------------- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/10/AR2011011006545.html Pakistan slaying divides nation By Pamela Constable<http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/pamela+constable/> Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, January 11, 2011 * * *KARACHI, PAKISTAN - The assassin has been showered with rose petals, his home has become a shrine to the faithful and thousands of supporters have marched in the streets, praising him as a heroic defender of Islam. * *Mumtaz Qadri, 26, pleaded guilty in a Pakistani court Monday to murdering the governor of Punjab province, Salman Taseer, because of the governor's outspoken opposition to Pakistan's harsh blasphemy law, which makes it a capital crime to criticize the prophet Muhammad. * *Qadri, a policeman who was assigned to protect Taseer, shot him 26 times Jan. 4<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/05/AR2011010500341.html>, apparently in response to the governor's public comments on blasphemy. Police officials and Qadri's lawyer said he told the judge in Rawalpindi that he had acted alone and was not influenced by any religious group. The hearing was held one day early to prevent his fans from mobbing the court. * *But Qadri's act, while condemned by some members of Pakistan's small moderate elite, has quickly united and emboldened a broad spectrum of Islamic groups<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/04/AR2011010400955.html>across the country. It has exposed both the sharp schisms here and the weakness of Pakistan's political leaders to counter the growing popularity of radical Islam. * *The fallout from the murder, which came amid the near-collapse of the country's ruling coalition<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/07/AR2011010701930.html>, has also raised new questions about the viability of Pakistan's democratic order at a time when Washington has embraced the government as a critical partner in the fight against the Taliban. * *"Mumtaz Qadri sacrificed himself to protect the sanctity of our prophet, and every one of us here is ready to do the same thing," said Abdul Majid, a seminary student who was among tens of thousands of supporters who rallied in this huge port city Sunday, demanding that the country's controversial blasphemy law be preserved. * *Many people at the march were Islamic activists and seminary students who hoisted posters of Qadri and carried flags of religious parties, including two banned Sunni militant groups. The rally was peaceful, but hundreds of participants shouted provocative and emotional chants, including "Life to Mumtaz Qadri, death to Salman Taseer, death to all blasphemers." * *The slaying of Taseer, 66, a liberal politician who had condemned the blasphemy law and the death sentence against a Christian peasant woman accused of insulting the prophet, has shaken the nation. * *Beyond Qadri's crime, it was the reaction to it - the tepid and evasive comments by various officials, the cowed silence of affluent and professional groups, and the unabashed cheers from unexpected as well as predictable quarters - that has stunned and frightened the nation's small Westernized elite. * *Blasphemy is a highly sensitive issue for many Muslims in Pakistan, a deeply impoverished country of 180 million. But the blasphemy law, adopted in the mid-1980s during the Islamist dictatorship of Gen. Zia ul-Haq, has also been misused and manipulated to target minority groups, including Christians and Shiite Muslims, and to settle personal scores. * *In recent months, Parliament had begun gingerly discussing ways to make the law less punitive and more precise. Charges can be made on absurdly petty grounds, such as the recent case of a doctor who was accused of blasphemy because he threw away the business card of someone named Mohammed. * *In the wake of Taseer's murder, however, the government of President Asif Ali Zardari has rapidly backpedaled on any idea of reforming the law. * *Sherry Rehman, a liberal legislator from Karachi who recently introduced a bill to amend the blasphemy law, has been politically isolated since Taseer's murder, threatened by protesters and declared a non-Muslim by one Islamic leader. She is now in seclusion at her home, under special police guard. * *"I am amazed at the ferocity of the onslaught," Rehman said Sunday. "I was trying to find a middle ground, but now no one wants to touch the issue. I think this retreat is going to set the country back for years to come." * *Rehman was joined by a potentially influential voice for Pakistani liberalism on Monday when Bilawal Bhutto Zardari - the son of Zardari and assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto - called those celebrating Taseer's death "the real blasphemers" and pledged to defend minority rights. Bhutto Zardari is considered the eventual heir to his family's political legacy, although he lives in Britain and, at 22, is not yet actively engaged in politics. * *Although few Pakistanis were surprised to see extremist Islamic groups demonizing Taseer, many were startled when leaders of the Barelvi sect, known as a moderating force in Sunni Islam, declared that Taseer did not deserve to be mourned as a Muslim. Analysts said Barelvis might be using the blasphemy issue to compete with the dominant, and more radical, Deobandi sect. * *"The silence of the so-called liberal establishment is criminal," said Haider Abbasy, an official of the secular Muttahida Qaumi Movement party that dominates Pakistan's largest city. "We have been warning about the Talibanization of Karachi for a long time, and people always accuse us of having a political agenda. But we are sitting on a ticking time bomb." * -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "humanrights movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/humanrights-movement?hl=en.
