Growing Religious Fanaticism in Pakistan

Though 96% of Pakistan’s 175 million people are Muslims, laws on blasphemy enacted during the rule of military dictator General Zia ul Haq are used frequently to target and harass the small minority of Christians and Hindus. The infamous blasphemy law can be used to arbitrarily incarcerate anyone who is alleged to have insulted Islam’s Holy Prophet or made any derogatory remarks against any Muslim holy personage. Those accused of blasphemy are regularly subjected to harassment, threats and attacks. One Christian was sentenced to be hanged merely for the factually remarking that the Prophet Mohammed’s parents could not have been Muslim, as they died before the Prophet proclaimed Islam. Police, lawyers and even judges are regularly subject to threats and attacks in cases involving blasphemy, where in several cases, people have been sentenced to death on what are false and fabricated accusations. Where the judges show understanding, those acquitted are forced to flee from their homes, or are killed.

In November 2010, Asia Bibi, a poor Christian village woman, was sentenced to be hanged on a charge of blasphemy, following flimsy and obviously motivated charges levelled against her, of having abused Prophet Mohammed. The evidence in what was an obviously fabricated case was so thin that the sentencing provoked international outrage, with the Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, vowing to seek a Presidential pardon. Pakistan’s former Information Minister Mrs. Sherry Rehman moved a bill in Parliament to do away with the excesses of Sharia Law. Islamic Parties immediately launched a nationwide protest, with clerics even offering a reward to anyone who would execute Asia Bibi. Television channels broadcast inflammatory statements calling for Taseer and Sherry Rehman to be declared as heretics. Amidst fiery rhetoric denouncing him as being a heretic, Punjab’s Governor Salman Taseer was assassinated, in cold blood on January 4, by one of his own security guards, Malik Mumtaz Qadri, who pumped 24 bullets into the man he was designated to protect.

The extent of religious fanaticism prevalent in Pakistan can be gauged from the fact that rather than being condemned, Qadri was showered by crowds with flower petals when produced before a Magistrate in Islamabad. Moreover, no notable cleric in Lahore, including the Khateeb of the famous Badshahi Mosque Maulana Abul Khatir Azad was willing to perform Governor Taseer’s last rites.  Letters to the Editors of newspapers and postings on Websites like Face book and Twitter by Pakistanis across the world, overwhelmingly denounced Taseer and lauded his killer. While Pakistani diplomats, officials, politicians and journalists have repeatedly spoken of Pakistan being a “moderate” Muslim country despite playing host to terrorist groups ranging from the Lashkar e Taiba to the Taliban, the public reaction to Taseer’s assassination has exposed the dangerous extent to which religious fanaticism and violence are shutting out moderate views. It is interesting that People’s Party Leader Sherry Rehman has not yet found a single legislator, even from her own ruling Party, to openly back her efforts to amend blasphemy laws. The guns and grenades of the Jihadis and suicide bombers are definitely prevailing over the voices of reason and moderation in Pakistan.

While Islamic extremism has been a fact of life since the birth of Pakistan, commencing with riots to declare the Ahmediyas as non-Muslims in the 1950s, the rot really set in when General Mohamed Zia ul Haq overthrew and executed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. In order to terrorize and contain the influence of Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples’ Party, General Zia armed and equipped cadres of Islamic Parties like the Jamat e Islami. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 led to close collaboration between the CIA and ISI, in arming and training radical Islamic groups for Jihad in Afghanistan. When the Russians finally withdrew from Afghanistan, Zia and his successors in the Pakistan army commenced using Jihadi groups that had emerged for Jihad in Jammu and Kashmir. Jihad in Kashmir soon turned to Jihad against India and across India, with a terrorist strike against the Red Fort in Deli which preceded the December 2001 attack on Parliament, and indeed all across India, culminating in the terrorist strike of 26/11 in Mumbai, by the Lashkar e Taiba.

The determination of Pakistan’s army to wage Jihad against India and establish Taliban extremism in Afghanistan, led to Jihadi groups from Chechnya to the Philippines assembling in Pakistan and Afghanistan, for terrorist activities all across the world. This culminated in the terrorist strikes of September 11, 2001 on New York and Washington and led to the Bush Administration launching it global war on terror and, ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan. But the ISI, while professing to support the Americans, continued to assist radical groups against India and provide support and safe haven to the Taliban leadership and fighters in Pakistan. With extremist groups continuing to receive support from the ISI, it was only a matter of time before they established control over the Lal Masjid in the capital Islamabad and started terrorising the capital’s population.

The attack by the Pakistan army on pro-Taliban radicals in the Lal Masjid in July 2007 led to the deaths of hundreds of the Masjid’s inmates, including over 300 Pashtun women students studying in the Masjid’s Madrasssa for women. The pro-Taliban radicals, who the Pakistan army and ISI had assiduously cultivated for years, turned their guns against the Pakistan army, under the banner of the Tehriq e Taliban e Pakistan.  The Taliban today controls virtually the entire North West Frontier province now renamed “Pakhtunkhwa”. Moreover, pro-Taliban Punjabi groups like the Lashkar e Jhangvi not only targeted Shias, but also have assisted in attacks on military personnel in urban centres in Punjab Province, like Rawalpindi and Lahore. Public support for these groups, however, remains, because of the consistent propaganda unleashed by the army that they are waging Jihad against India and are “freedom fighters” fighting and prepared to die for the Muslims of Kashmir.

Adding to these self inflicted wounds, Pakistan’s economy is growing at barely 3-4% annually, despite massive foreign aid. Investment in education and literacy is minimal. Unemployed youth brainwashed in Madrassas, find Jihad against India, in Afghanistan and indeed worldwide, an attractive proposition.  In effect, Pakistan faces a siege within, wherein radicalism, witnessed in the aftermath of Taseer’s assassination is steadily gaining ground. The larger issue is that a State founded in the name of religion, has turned away from the basic premises of moderation, on which it was founded. Irfran Hussian, a leading voice for moderation and toleration in Pakistan aptly noted: “When a country is created in the name of faith, then inevitably that faith will come to dominate modes of thought and behaviour”.

Ambassador G Parthasarathy is India's former High Commissoner to Pakistan

Courtesy: Nai Duniya, 08 January 2011

(The views expressed in the article are that of the author and do not represent the views of the editorial committee or the centre for land warfare studies).