No individual has influenced the course of US military strategy more over the last 10 years than Osama bin Laden. In an age of increasingly narrow ideologies, Osama has been the standard bearer for international terrorism. Beyond that simple equation, however, lies a complex, contradictory chain of events that over the last decade has seen Australian forces caught in the unending US war in Afghanistan.

In what is probably the most accurate statement on his passing, Afghan officials termed bin Laden’s death a “symbolic victory”. Afghans have suffered more than any others at the hands of Osama bin Laden, but they are well aware that his death will not bring them a better future.

For a time bin Laden’s ability to evade the most powerful and sophisticated military force in human history gave him a superhuman aura. But as the body count rose the ultimate futility of his terrorism has become ever more evident. For in every conflict in which Osama engaged — from Afghanistan and Iraq to Pakistan and Somalia — even other Islamists eventually realised that his al Qaeda lacked any sustainable vision for Muslim majority societies.

There is no question that Osama’s radical politics were a product of autocratic regimes across the Arab world. Some were aligned with the West, others, like Syria, are still official enemies. Most now face unprecedented challenges from grassroots movements that make a mockery of Western notions of moderate and non-moderate Muslim states.

Al Qaeda’s brand of violent, radical politics too has been swept aside by the soft power of popular politics. Last week the Hamas movement signed a peace agreement with the secular Fatah in Egypt. Both were under immense pressure from ordinary Palestinians to reach such a settlement. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has replaced militancy with political negotiations. Inevitably these developments have their uncertainties. But for societies fatigued by oppression and war they are welcome developments.

It is time the West read these important signals. When the former US pro-consul in Iraq Paul Bremer announced the capture of Saddam Hussein before a packed news conference the hall erupted into loud celebrations. This time, the celebrations are relatively muted.

In a week dominated by the spectacle of the Royal Wedding, one cannot help but feel the theatre of bin Laden’s death obscures the moral and tactical questions we need to answer.

Will his murder reduce the terrorism threat or weaken the insurgency our troops are fighting alongside others in Afghanistan and Pakistan? And why has it taken so long to find bin Laden? That last question is especially prescient given that he was found living in a house in Abbottabad, a settled, urban part of Pakistan’s north-west that is home to many serving and retired military personnel, including some of my own distant relatives.

Only hours after bin Laden’s assassination was announced, unknown assailants torched a NATO supply convoy and killed four policemen in the nearby region of Attock.

Mindful of further devastating attacks, Pakistan’s military has been averse to emphasising its role in the joint operation with US forces that led to bin Laden’s death. Militant groups are expected to mount fresh attacks. That includes Tehreek-e-Taliban, the Pakistani branch of the Islamist insurgency that is more closely aligned to Al Qaeda than its Afghan counterparts.

It is easily forgotten now, but the key moment in bin Laden’s war against the West was 1990. In that year Saudi Arabia invited US troops into the desert kingdom to end Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait. Bin Laden considered it a sacrilege for American soldiers to be present on the same soil as Mecca, for Muslims the most sacred place on earth. Already disillusioned by the Saudi regime, this was what convinced Osama to engage in high-profile terrorism in the hope of arousing global Muslim animosity towards the US.

The tragic irony is that the international community played a pivotal role in giving Osama international prominence well before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

Underwritten by the US and Saudi Arabia and managed by Pakistan’s military, the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s brought bin Laden and other extremists to the fore. The Soviet Union’s eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan and subsequent collapse convinced militant Islamists that their violence could make politics and the global system redundant.

Recent events prove the opposite to be true. Bin Laden is not the only one who was seeking shelter from this conflict. Millions of innocent civilians remain homeless throughout Pakistan, while in neighbouring Afghanistan and in Iraq and many other places the victims of a decade of war continue to suffer.

Liquidating terrorists like Osama bin Laden will not end the terrorism threat. It is grievance and poverty in all its shades — of livelihoods, of opportunities and ideas — that ultimately breeds the conditions in which terrorism is born.

Mustafa Qadri,
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 2 March 2011 20:00 GMT

Despite repeated climbdowns by the Pakistan government to appease extremists over the blasphemy laws, the minorities minister’s assassination proves there is no room for compromise. It is time for Pakistan authorities to bring perpetrators of violence to justice.

The federal government was quick to respond to the murder of Shahbaz Bhatti with much stronger criticism of extremism than that which followed Salmaan Taseer’s murder on January 4. President Asif Zardari condemned the “heinous act” and vowed that the government would continue to “stand firm” against extremists. But the Pakistan government has been on the back foot for the past few months: it has largely retreated from any talk of addressing the widely recognised problems with the blasphemy laws; it has failed to “stand firm” against violence from radical groups, and it has, by and large, failed to protect and promote the rule of law.

Sadly, Pakistan’s most powerful institution, the army, remains silent on this issue as it did following Taseer’s assassination, even though it has issued statements on other matters of national interest in the past. The country’s largest opposition political party, the Pakistan Muslim League, has also stayed quiet.

A Pakistan Taliban spokesperson who later claimed responsibility for the murder was not so shy, nor was a note apparently left by the killers alongside Bhatti’s body. Both stated that he was being killed for criticising Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

The most ominous aspect of the Bhatti murder is that he himself was so clearly aware of the risks, but still did not receive sufficient protection. Bhatti, the Catholic son of a former army soldier and schoolteacher, had continued to receive death threats this year.According to one report a month ago, Bhatti’s security detail was far smaller than that accorded to other federal cabinet ministers despite the threats that arguably made him the most targeted government politician after the president and prime minister.

“I met him only last week and he was terrified for his safety,” says Asma Jahangir, former chair of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and currently president of the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association. “In fact, he told me to be more careful and not to travel without security.”

The media’s coverage of the murder has been relatively subdued. One channel with links to radical religious groups claimed Bhatti’s murder was an inside job aimed at deflecting attention away from the trial of American intelligence contractor Raymond Davis . Others have ignored the note left by Bhatti’s killers claiming to be acting for Al al-Qaeida in the Punjab and Fidayeen-e-Muhammad, a militant group linked to the Pakistan Taliban. Most of the coverage has focused on Bhatti’s minimal security.

The solution to this malaise is not greater security, although it is vital that people against whom violence is threatened are provided with adequate protection. Neither is burying our collective heads in the toxic sands of conspiracy. At its heart the Bhatti murder, like that of Taseer, is about the abdication of government responsibility in the face of mob and political violence crudely justified as defence of Islam.

Amnesty International has called on the Pakistan government to bring Bhatti’s killers to justice. Such crimes, and a flood of incitements to violence against those calling for honest reform of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, thrive in the atmosphere of impunity and irresponsibility fostered by the government’s failure to uphold its human rights obligations.

It is a sentiment shared across Pakistan’s civil society.

“The government must take up this task wholeheartedly,” Jahanghir adds, “but I fear it hasn’t got the strength to do that.”

That may be so, but despite the sobering situation there have been signals of an emerging realisation that perpetrators of violence must be held accountable. A group of parliamentarians has issued a resolution condemning the murder of Taseer and promoting the principles of equality, tolerance, pluralism and democracy in Pakistan. Although it did not expressly criticise the blasphemy laws, the resolution mentioned the vital point that authorities must put a stop to the violence justified in the name of religion, which erodes the rule of law and sets the stage for further abuses.

Based on the immediate reaction of Pakistan’s media, particularly its highly influential private television stations, Bhatti’s assassination did not make a major impression on the Pakistani public. That may change in the next few days. But for the Pakistan government, it sure must set off tremendous alarm bells. Now is the time for the government, with the public backing of the army, to take bold steps to defend human rights and the rule of law.

[This article first appeared in The Guardian on March 2, 2011: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/mar/02/shahbaz-bahtti-pakistan-violence.]

Mustafa Qadri,
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 February 2011 18:43 GMT

The murder of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer by his own guardhas prompted an ever growing witch-hunt, driven by religious groups but controlled by no one. The threat of this uncontested vigilantism posing as Islamic empowerment should be taken as seriously as the Taliban.

There was a moment last weekend that juxtaposed beautifully with the latest crisis faced by Pakistan. As hundreds of thousands – Islamists and Marxists, centrists and otherwise apolitical working men and women – marched for democratic regime change in Egypt, 40,000 mostly men marched in Pakistan’s heartland city of Lahore to protest against changes to the country’s controversial blasphemy law regime. Protesters in Lahore threatened to cause greater anarchy if the blasphemy laws were changed – threats reminiscent of the Pakistan Taliban.

It is important to note that, as an instrument for protecting the honour of Islam, Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have been an abject failure. As rights groups point out, the laws are vaguely defined and do not require accusers to prove criminal intent. Police rarely investigate before arresting alleged blasphemers. Taseer’s murderer may say he killed him for committing blasphemy, but there is no evidence he ever did anything of the sort. Taseer’s only crime was to highlight the severe failings of the blasphemy laws, a point lost on many who endorsed his murder.

“If a campaign were to be carried out on all the electronic media explaining exactly what the blasphemy laws are, the fact that vigilantes have murdered other people due to political, economic or other rivalries and motives, people would not favour it,” says veteran journalist and human rights campaigner Beena Sarwar.

Since the current laws made defiling the Qur’an and defaming the prophet crimes punishable respectively by life imprisonment and death in 1986, anywhere between 300 and 3,000 people have been accused of blasphemy. Of these, roughly 50% belong to religious minorities, a group that constitutes only 3% of Pakistan’s 180 million population.

But the blasphemy laws do not just target religious minorities and the poor. The slain Taseer, a wealthy businessman and key ally of President Asif Zardari is testament to that. But even Muslims are not safe from the witch-hunt. During a visit to a village in the Punjab late last year, I was told that local Sufi Muslims had charged “a young Wahhabi” with blasphemy for arguing that Prophet Muhammad was a human being and that prayers should not be directed to him or venerated saints but only Allah.

Last Saturday a magistrate remanded a 17-year-old boy on charges of blasphemy after he allegedly wrote insulting comments about the Prophet during an exam more than eight months ago. Most disturbing, the charges were brought by the intermediate board of education in Karachi. The board noted that the boy confessed to the “unpardonable sin” and blamed it on frustration over inability to answer an exam question and the influence of a discussion about Islam he had with some cousins from Norway.

In a society where the law and order system is already fragile and amenable to vigilantism, the blasphemy law has opened up a Pandora’s box of opportunities for people to take the law into their own hands, or force fearful police and courts to provide a rubber stamp to their vendettas. None of Pakistan’s major politicians or its powerful army chief, not traditionally averse to making public statements on matters of national interest, has condemned Taseer’s murder or the misuse of the blasphemy laws.

Political parties were glaringly absent from public prayers organised for the slain Taseer over the weekend. In response to a request to attend one of them, Senator Abdul Rahim Khan Mandokhel from Balochistan said, “he [Taseer] met his fate. This is our religion. You have to accept it or leave Pakistan.” In an open letter, a broad coalition of citizens called the Citizens for Democracy condemned the remarks and urged the president of the senate to take disciplinary measures against Mandokhel if he did not offer a public apology. Others have called on the courts and police to charge people who have publicly called for victims of the blasphemy laws or advocates for their reform to be murdered.

It is arguable that even more dangerous are those like Mumtaz Qadri, Taseer’s murderer, who act out of a genuine belief that, armed just with God’s command, any citizen has the right to commit murder based on rumour and slander.

On Monday, Pakistan’s prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani reiterated his government’s refusal to amend the blasphemy laws, noting proudly that it was his predecessor Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who “introduced this law in Pakistan”. True, Gilani’s government is besieged and in no position to pick a losing battle. But if more Pakistanis do not wage a war for sanity all of us will lose.

[This article originally appeared in the Guardian on February 3, 2011: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/03/pakistan-blasphemy-laws-taliban]

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws make it a crime to defile the Quran or to defame Prophet Mohammad, punishable by life imprisonment and death respectively. But the laws have been roundly criticised by civil rights groups as appropriate safeguards against misuse as they have become notorious for being used to settle petty private disputes.

Religious minorities have been especially vulnerable to the blasphemy laws with around half of all charges being brought against them — even though a mere 3 per cent of Pakistan’s population of Pakistan is non-Muslim.

Hundreds of blasphemy cases have been brought against minorities in Pakistan in the last 26 years. One of those was against Asia Bibi, a poor farm worker from rural Punjab sentenced to death for apparently defaming the Prophet after some Muslim co-workers refused to drink water with her because she is Christian. Asia’s case came to prominence globally when it was highlighted by the international media.

In Pakistan Salmaan Taseer was the most senior political figure to publicly appeal for Asia Bibi to be released and for the blasphemy law to be reformed. Taseer received almost daily death threats from religious zealots for his stand, but few could have predicted that one of his security guards would gun him down at close range. Mumtaz Qadri, Taseer’s murderer, freely admits to killing the late governor because of his criticism of the blasphemy law.

Most disturbing of all, it appears Qadri told other members of Taseer’s security detail about his plan, and they allowed him to shoot Taseer 27 times before dropping his weapon and surrendering.

Normally fractured Islamist groups have found common cause in supporting the murder of Taseer, the liberal governor of Punjab who was critical of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws — and their support is echoed by the Taliban. This unusual coalition has helped silence the already restricted debate on the blasphemy laws in Pakistan.

The murder of a high profile politician by a member of his own security detail has shaken the country in several significant ways.

Nothing has been more ominous than the way it has united Pakistan’s generally fractious Islamic groups. Although religious groups have consistently supported the blasphemy laws in their current form, in recent years rival Muslim sects have been in increasingly violent conflict with each other, conflict what has been punctuated by the murder of leading Wahabi and Sufi clerics whose deaths are blamed by both camps on each other’s followers. It is therefore notable that these otherwise warring groups united to endorse the murder of Taseer.

Their support for the blasphemy laws is shared by the Taliban. This confirms and indeed demonstrates an alarming nexus between the Taliban insurgency Pakistan is fighting along the border with Afghanistan and mainstream religious opinion in urban centres like Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar.

As Bilawal Zardari Bhutto, co-Chair of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and son of Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, railed against the murderer of in London after the murder, members of the Pakistan Taliban insurgency sent out an ominous warning.

“We appreciate Mumtaz Qadri’s efforts in killing the blasphemer Taseer. The Taliban are also after other secular politicians and no one will be left, they will be killed the way Taseer was killed,” said Mullah Noor Alam, a middle-ranking Taliban commander currently in North Waziristan when he spoke exclusively to New Matilda. Alam said those were his personal views as well as those of the insurgency.

Such views are not isolated to the Taliban. A week after Taseer’s murder on 4 January, tens of thousands gathered in Karachi to support Mumtaz Qadri and similar rallies occurred in most major cities including one in Lahore this week that garnered 40,000 people. Alam’s comments were echoed by many who attended the Karachi rally. “Whoever blasphemes will face the same fate as Salmaan Taseer,” poor labourer Abdul Rehman told New Matilda.

Facebook fanpages and other websites proliferated in the wake of Taseer’s murder, extolling the virtue of Qadri as a “ghazi” or warrior of Islam and defender of the Prophet. Although most of the Facebook sites have been taken down, a frenzy of apparent celebration has continued to sweep through Pakistan, including in Qadri’s hometown and Army headquarters Rawalpindi. The celebration is fed by conservative TVcommentators and a well organised religious lobby that can arrange public gatherings on short notice.

These sudden developments suggest that the battle against religious extremism in Pakistan is beyond the scope of military planners — whether in Rawalpindi or in international capitals.  Qadri openly admitted to killing Taseer but although he has already been brought before the federal Anti-Terrorism Court his trial has yet to commence. Pakistan’s judiciary has an opportunity to challenge self-proclaimed defenders of the faith from continuing down the spiral toward lawlessness by taking the law into their own hands.

But if anything Pakistan’s senior courts have shown a sympathy towards the Islamists, as several high profile recent developments demonstrate.

In November the Lahore High Court took the unprecedented and apparently unconstitutional step of barring Pakistan President Zardari from pardoning Asia Bibi until it hears an appeal against a sentence.That does not appear likely for some time given passions surrounding her case and the genuine fear that someone might try to kill her if she appears before the court.

During hearings into a recent constitutional amendment last year, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry of Pakistan’s Supreme Court said Islam and not the elected parliament was the highest authority in the land. Another judge on that bench wondered whether Pakistan could afford “afford to follow western parliaments which have decided in favour of gay marriages.” Both statements played to the strong Islamist sentiment here that liberal forces and greater secularity are a threat to Pakistan’s Islamic identity, a key argument of those who supported the murder of Taseer.

Along with the PPP’s Bilawal Zardari Bhutto, individual members of the Urdu-speaking community’s Muttahida Quami Movement and the ethnic Pashtun Awami National Party, the other major secular political parties in the country, have quietly condemned Taseer’s murder. But none of these parties have officially affirmed their support for reforming the blasphemy laws at the centre of the crisis.
The PPP-led federal government has gone even further to say it will defend the current laws from any reforms.

Civil society groups inside Pakistan have championed the cause with a slew of anti-blasphemy law rallies, websites and court petitions allowing the voices of moderate Pakistanis to be heard. These rallies were dwarfed by those organised in support of Mumtaz Qadri. Given the danger of openly opposing Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws these days — and how few political supporters there are for blasphemy law reform aside from former Information Minister Sherry Rehman and Bilawal Zardari Bhutto — such displays are a brave show of force. Some civil society groups even lodged complaints with police and the Supreme Court against local preachers for inciting the murder of Asia Bibi and Sherry Rehman. Still, the courts have an unreliable record in prosecuting those who commit acts of violence in the name of Islam.

And alone among mainstream Pakistani religious leaders, Javed Ahmed Ghamadi has called for the blasphemy laws to be repealed, arguing that they have no basis in Islamic law. But Ghamadi has lived in Malaysia since last year, when police discovered a plot to assassinate him. Such is the stifling environment in Pakistan now that even reasoned debate can have deadly consequences — and the implications of this local blasphemy debate in the wider region remain to be seen.

It also suggests that the battle against militant Islamists must be fought with ideas, not just guns.

On the face of it the assassination of Salman Taseer, former Governor of Punjab province and a liberal lynchpin of the civilian government, was merely an act of crazed fanaticism. According to assassin Mumtaz Qadri, a member of the elite police force tasked with protecting dignitaries, he acted in response to Taseer’s vocal support for a poor Christian woman who had been sentenced to death under a flimsy claim of insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Yet to understand this latest episode of politically motivated violence in Pakistan, one has to dig deeper than the usual suspects. Yes, a form of Islam that will countenance no criticism and sees violence as an appropriate form of dissent is growing in Pakistan. Nor is this violent form of political Islam limited to the Taliban insurgency being fought by the Pakistan Army and our Diggers in Afghanistan. In each of Pakistan’s four provinces there exist local militant outfits whose overall aim is to create a repressive, Islamic state and battle perceived enemies like India, the US or the Pakistan state itself.

But more significant than all these factors is the fact that although on paper Pakistan’s institutions reflect the liberal principles of modern statehood – like parliamentary democracy and a secular judiciary – corruption, inequality and decades of Army patronage of Islamist groups have left many sceptical of the virtues of these principles.

Like any country, Pakistan has entrenched disparities between rich and poor. But the disparity here is extreme and goes beyond mere economics to social and cultural divisions where people generally accept their status in the society. While the many poor in Pakistan have difficult lives locked in menial servitude to the powerful, ritualistic Islam is one of the few outlets for joy, grief, pride and disgust. This sense of ‘public’ Islam transcends class barriers, so the powerful are expected to abide and respect certain cultural norms deemed to be Islamic, even if these displays can be superficial public expressions that do not reflect private habits or beliefs. Even now, for example, most of the senior generals in the Army, the most powerful institution in the country, are known to privately imbibe while continuing to support Islamist groups.

In murdering Taseer, Munawar Qadri delivered the message that even the privileged are accountable before God. That they must be punished by death for blasphemy, and not one of the more immediate ills that have mired Pakistan in poverty, nepotism and violence, however, reflects the troubling reality that many have lost hope in improving the nation. Instead of trying to alleviate ills of this world, many of our citizens have chosen to focus on the profane, like violently protesting alleged acts of blasphemy.

Only a handful of people have publically decried Taseer’s assassination and most major political parties have responded in measured tones. Some, like the main opposition Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif and most mainstream Muslim groups did not even send high representatives to Taseer’s funeral.

Pakistan’s religious lobby has been quick to describe Qadri as a religious hero, fighting to protect Islam against a wealthy, pro-Western businessman whose support for a poor Christian was in fact a cover for continued foreign attempts to undermine the state and Islam. Remarkably, Pakistan already has laws that criminalise incitement to kill, yet no one has been prosecuted despite several public statements by hardline religious figures to kill or punish Taseer for criticising the blasphemy law even weeks before he was murdered.

Of course, this has not occurred in vacuum, nor is it an organic development. Our Islamic heritage comes from the Sufi tradition whose most venerated saints preached in favour of love and compassion. But that tradition has been under assault ever since Pakistan’s pro-US Islamist dictator General Zia ul-Haq went on an aggressive drive to ‘Islamize’ the country in the 1980s in the hope of ensconcing himself in power. Understanding this development in Pakistan’s history is critical because the enforcement of rigid forms of Islam has always had political underpinnings.

Blasphemy laws were first introduced to the subcontinent by the British in the 19^th century to divide the burgeoning independence movement along religious lines. General Zia took blasphemy to an entirely different level with vague offences against Prophet Muhammad and desecration of the Quran that have especially targeted religious minorities, the most vulnerable members of Pakistan society.

Liberal and progressive forces have fought hard to combat the institutionalised intolerance, but they have never constituted a major political force in a country dominated by the Army and feudal and business elites that have little interest in a more equitable and tolerant society. Sadly the vast majority of Pakistanis who live a modern lifestyle have largely done so quietly for fear of confronting the very forces that claimed Salman Taseer’s life.

Despite this, on paper Pakistan retains a robust constitution that enshrines key human rights protections, secular courts and parliamentary democracy. What is lacking is political and popular will to enforce laws that protect Pakistanis from politically-motivated violence in the name of Islam. Enforcing these laws will deal an infinitely more powerful blow to the violent intolerance than any drone strike or troop surge.

[This article first appeared in ABC Unleashed on January 14, 2010: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/43012.html]

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 December 2010 15.00 GMT

While the country reels from flood devastation, an increasing gap between rich and poor, and a ceaseless energy recession, Pakistan’s religious lobby has lined up to attack a straw woman. Yet again a powerful political lobby has decided to focus on an issue that will not solve the nation’s most pressing problems.

It all began when last year Muslim women in the village of Ittan Walli refused to take water from mother-of-five Asia Bibi because she was Christian. According to one of the women, Bibi reacted with disgust and, it is claimed, made disparaging remarks about the prophet Muhammad. Soon the local cleric and police were involved and Asia was behind bars for breaching Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws. She has already spent close to 18 months in one of Pakistan’s hellish prisons.

The blasphemy laws – a set of provisions inserted into Pakistan’s criminal laws under the Islamist dictator General Ziaul Haq – made it a crime punishable by death for anyone charged with defiling the Qur’an or defaming the prophet Muhammad.

The Lahore high court has taken the unprecedented step of barring the president of Pakistan from pardoning Bibi, a step decried as unconstitutional by legal experts. The blasphemy law “turns them [minorities] into second-class citizens, deprived of freedom of expression or belief,” says Human Rights Watch’s Ali Dayan Hasan.

If squeaky wheels do indeed get the grease then Pakistan’s vocal religious lobby have been liberally lathered by successive governments and a pliant media. Along with criticism of the military establishment, honest and critical exposure of religious chauvinism is a dangerous business.

In Peshawar, Maulana Yusuf Qureshi offered a reward of Rs500,000 (£3,600) to anyone who killed Bibi if the government did not execute her, an astonishing incitement against a fellow citizen. That included calling on the Taliban to take matters into their own hands and murder Bibi if the government did not. A lead editorial in Nawa-e-Waqt, one of the biggest Urdu-language newspapers in the country, lauded Qureshi’s rhetoric. If only sharia law applied in Pakistan, the editorial went on to lament, the current debate over reforming the blasphemy law would be entirely moot.

Meanwhile in Mohmand tribal agency, the Taliban claimed responsibility for a massive suicide blast at a meeting of government officials and a local anti-Taliban Lashkar that killed 44.

Pakistan’s federal minister for minorities and the governor of Punjab have both been threatened with death for calling for Bibi’s death sentence to be commuted. Former information minister Sherry Rehman has also received death threats for introducing a private members bill calling for the blasphemy laws to be amended to reduce its misuse.

The clear link between the terrorism that has rocked Pakistan and the blasphemy-related incitement to violence cannot have been lost on the Nawa-e-Waqt editors, Qureshi or others. Like the popular mantra that the terrorism is the work of India and other foreign actors and not home grown, the kill Bibi campaign reflects the simple fact that our most powerful religious leaders have no answers relevant to the crises faced by Pakistan.

At a time when WikiLeaks has disclosed the abject hypocrisy of one of the key apologists for the Taliban and Islamist excesses in our country – who despite publicly blaming the US for all the problems faced by Pakistan privately lobbyied to be made prime minister “for a price” – it is worth remembering that the Islamist lobby represents the worst kind of opportunism.

Even Sufi-religious orders such as Sunni Tehreek, often touted as a more liberal antidote to the Taliban and its Wahabi supporters in Pakistan, have called for Bibi to be killed and the existing blasphemy law to remain in force.

Scholars who genuinely practice the theological precepts of ijtihed, or independent reasoning, a vital ingredient for challenging the present chauvinism, are thin on the ground. One of their most important members, Dr Umar Farooq, was murdered by the Taliban because of his involvement in an impressive army programme to deradicalise young men trained to be suicide bombers.

Even the architect of the blasphemy laws under which Bibi has been sentenced has admitted they are too draconian and liable to abuse. Others have argued that at least, for the first time, some Pakistanis are able to openly talk about amending or repealing the blasphemy laws. And true we are not a nation of intolerant Muslims. But if the majority of us remain silent as the dangerous winds of intolerance spread through our villages and mosques, what exactly does it mean to be tolerant?

[This article first appeared in The Guardian on December 9, 2010: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/dec/09/religious-lobby-pakistan-asia-bibi]

For three decades Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Professor of Particle Physics at Qaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, has been promoting science and humanism in Pakistan. His was one of the earliest voices to sound the alarm not only against the Pakistan Taliban movement but also against the perils of developing nuclear weapons and the deepening religious intolerance that has been aided in large part by the Pakistan state. In this fascinating and insightful encounter, journalist Mustafa Qadri speaks with Professor Hoodbhoy about science, Islam, and the challenges faced by Pakistan.

MQ: There is a tendency in Muslim communities to look at past advancements in science by Muslim societies. In Pakistan, the development of the nuclear bomb was hailed as a marvel of modern Islamic science. What do you think is the relationship between Islam and science today?

PH: Well, of course theological inquiry has nothing to do with the physical sciences today and it can provide no guidance in my opinion. Theology relates to an entirely different set of issues. It has to do with how humans perceive their role in the universe, what is right, what is wrong, what is the purpose of life, and so forth. Whereas natural science has a very defined purpose; which is to understand the workings of the natural universe. And I’m afraid that religion, any religion, no longer has anything to say about how we should investigate nature, what we expect to find.

MQ: There have been a slew of books by authors like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and a number of others talking about atheism and trying to distance society and the way it is governed by religion. Is that barking up the wrong tree? Does science have a role to play in social policies?

PH: No, I don’t see that. I see that our ethical and moral principles are perhaps defined by the species instinct within us to propagate us and to become more evolutionarily capable. However, the relation between morality, ethics and science is a distant one. I see that there are some things in society that we can ascribe to the need for us to survive… But other things, I think, are built on human experience and there does not seem to be a clear link between what is in existence in the field of morals and ethics and between science and rationalism.

SOURCE: http://pakistaniaat.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/an-interview-with-professor-pervez-hoodbhoy-forthcoming-suumer-issue/

Leading Pakistani humanist and anti-nuclear scientist Pervez Hoodbhoy gives Mustafa Qadri his take on the current crises facing his country

For three decades Pervez Hoodbhoy, professor of Physics at Qaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, has been promoting science and humanism in Pakistan. His was one of the earliest voices to sound the alarm on the perils of developing nuclear weapons, and on the danger posed by the country’s deepening religious intolerance — issues that have gone on to damage the country’s reputation. His respected scientific work has been published widely, but in 2001 when the Pakistani Government wanted to present him with a national award, Hoodbhoy refused it, saying that Pakistan’s misuse of such awards had eroded their own credibility. Recently I spoke to Professor Hoodbhoy about science, Islam and the challenges facing Pakistan.

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons have brought it notoriety worldwide. You’ve been a vocal critic of nuclear weapons now for two decades. What is the perception of nuclear weapons inside Pakistan?

Nuclear weapons have become a symbol of defiance for Pakistanis for two reasons. One, the bomb has been associated with Islam as a means of increasing its glory. And the second reason is that it is associated with Pakistan in a nationalistic way which is … no different to India, or perhaps what it was like in the United States when it first developed nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are a symbol of national pride in all countries. At the time of the nuclear tests religious parties took out cardboard replicas of the bomb, paraded them on the street with placards saying “Islamic bomb” and verses of the Koran.

It appears that kind of jingoism is pervasive in Pakistan.

Well it’s not just in Pakistan, you find in every part of the world humanistic principles are second priority. Even if they are admitted as theoretically good, nationalism and “my country right or wrong” often dominates … to the extent that the US — when they talk about casualties in Afghanistan or Iraq — they say 4000 American lives have been lost. How often do you see American newspapers mentioning 500,000 Iraqis have been killed? So you see this attachment to one’s own — this “us and them” — is very pervasive and it’s very hard to fight, but it must be fought.

So how can people fight it?

In places [blind nationalism and militarism] has been successfully fought [such as with] the anti-war movement [against the Iraq war] in the US and Europe. Let’s go even further back to the anti-Vietnam war movement. That was an expression of idealism and humanism. The feeling hasn’t disappeared [but] it has to be cultivated and increased.

Speaking of anti-war movements, there is a great deal of opposition in Pakistan to the war its army is fighting against the Taliban under intense US pressure. How does it manifest itself in the politics and public debate on the war?

There has been a reluctance to condemn the Taliban [and] al Qaeda for all the atrocities that have been committed [in Pakistan and abroad] and justifications instead have been sought [such as] “who else is opposing the Americans? The US is an imperial power and somebody has to fight them”. You see this confusion even among people in the Left in Muslim countries and in fact even among Hindus in India who belong to the Left who say someone has to oppose the US. So the fact that the US has been such a dreadful imperial power has confused people and made them look away from the fact that the Taliban are barbaric beyond any kind of calculation.

And all the people they are killing are ordinary Muslim Pakistanis.

Absolutely — ordinary Muslim Pakistanis. And so now I think perhaps the tide is beginning to turn.

The geopolitics behind the Taliban are fairly well known now. US support for jihadis against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s was pivotal. But what do you think are the social factors behind the so-called “Talibanisation” in Pakistan?

There has been poverty in the northwest tribal areas of Pakistan, and guns, for as long as anyone can remember. Then you have the history of the Americans coming in and launching their global jihad. But there’s one other thing — and that’s I think at the base of it all practically everywhere in the world — and that’s the fact that the world has moved much too fast for anyone’s comfort. The lives of our parents is totally different to our lives today and that is true practically everywhere. And then you look at the tribal areas [where the Taliban emerged]. Until 30-40 years ago they were living the lives of their fathers, their grandfathers and their great-grandfathers. No difference. And then comes something very important in the 1970s — migration, to Saudi Arabia and the Middle East where they get the opportunity to [do] very menial jobs. They come back with money and the technology it can buy, like pickup trucks, cell phones, and so forth. That starts changing the face of the region. Over time it changes the structure of society. Traditional lives have been disrupted. This is a change that is more cataclysmic than what you saw at the time of the industrial revolution in Europe.

Because of the rate of change?

Yes, the rate of change — just look at the impact that population growth has. Pakistan’s population at partition in 1947 was 28 million. Today it’s 170 million! In cities there is a totally different way of living. They are mega slums. What can grow in that? [Only] violence.

So really we have to go back before the current violence to partition?

Well yes, back to partition in terms of the religious intolerance that led to the creation of Pakistan — the notion that Hindus and Muslims could not live together, but that Muslims could live together. Well, the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 [after mass oppression by the Pakistan Army] proved that wrong. Religion is always divided [and Islam] has been divided [from the very beginning].

Do you think part of the problem is a tendency to focus on symbols of Islam like beards or burqas and not intellectual principles that might foster unity?

Religion is inserted where it absolutely has no place. For example if you go to [the university medical] clinic here in Islamabad you’ll find big posters that say “cleanliness is half of religion”. Well hang on, if that’s the case then why is this hospital so dirty? Or at the start of tree planting week they say it’s your Islamic duty to plant a tree. But the rate of deforestation [in Pakistan] is greater than most countries in the world!

Doesn’t that just mean we’ve been bad Muslims?

So, then it is said that Islam is good, Muslims are bad. There’s a mythologised version of the religion which has never been practised except in the early days of Islam. “If we go back to that early Islam everything will be ok.” The problem with this is that it bypasses 1400 years of human progress.

In a country like Pakistan then how do you tackle this?

In my mind the only way for Pakistan to move forward is for it to become secular, which means that people have the right to worship whatever they like and by whatever means. But no one has the right to impose their version of Islam on all of us.

Source URL: http://newmatilda.com/2009/11/09/humanist-islamabad

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