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Punjab Governer Salman Taseer Killed

tahaqureshi said:
But thats not the definition of liberal.
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the masses dont care what the real definition is..they have a percieved definition brought on by their experiences..thats all that matters now..!! hou can call it madness or insanity or just despair but it is reality for many now!
 
tGK the "muted reaction" of moderate Pakistanis can be explained very easily: look what happens to you when you dare to speak out against unjust and bigoted laws.

There was a protest called for in Karachi against the blasphemy law later this month. Guess what? It's been canceled. No organizer wants the blood of innocents murdered by a religious zealot on their hands. Who will in this environment want to come out and openly say what they want when even the governor from the most powerful province isn't safe?

When one group is hell-bent on imposing their views on society via threats of violence and murder, only natural that you will have a "silent majority".
 
the Great Khan said:
the masses dont care what the real definition is..they have a percieved definition brought on by their experiences..thats all that matters now..!! hou can call it madness or insanity or just despair but it is reality for many now!
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The kind of sins even the common "religious" man is involved in Pakistan is pretty deplorable. Corruption, robbery, adultery, shirk, backbiting and a whole host of other things are very very common. And the liberals or the seculars or the elite are not the only ones involved; the majority are the masses. What about that?
 
Rayaan said:
Ok I accept that, i may come across as strong and I am firm in my Belvia but forcing someone to do or act against there will causes major problems, so I am all for true/fair tolerance in Pakistan for ALL Pakistanis regardless of back ground.

The problem is that the extremists/liberals are two sides of the same coin they both think they know best and are trying to force MILLIONS of Pakistanis to be, act, think like them OR ELSE.


The extremists wish to force everyone not only to be uber religious but due to ignorance they cant tell the difference between an individual relationship with Allah and the requirements of a religious state. So they force people to act in ways they are not prepared for so they do these things out of fear and not desire. When in reality they should teach and teach and teach and preach so that muslims learn and can make informed choices.


But the liberals are just as worse, westernised, liberal whilst trying to fudge and distort core islamic values trying to force alcohol and other unislamic acts upon Pakistanis, they like america, they want westernisation they want drone attacks they want to destroy the Taliban when the ordinary Pakistan dosent.

For Pakistan to succeed the population dosent need to pick a side it needs to make a stand against both these forces and make sure they understand that the will of Pakistan is not liberal and not extreme.

We want to be taught about islam and we want our children to learn about islam but we dont want people to force feed ideologies which are not familiar to us, we dont want the war on terror, we dont want drone attacks, we dont want invasions of swat and waziristan and we want our country to stand up against america.
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Oh cry me a river! Why are you even living in UK if you want to 'learn' Islam and don't want people to force their ideologies on you? Last time I checked Britain is a kafir, secular, liberal, democratic Christian on paper state with lots pubs and clubs all around the country and guess what they don't even have problem with homosexuality. I curse all those dirty little hypocrites who enjoy all the freedom, peace and individual liberties of Western liberalism and secularism yet want Pakistan to remain a stiff, bigoted, militant state in the name of religion.

...And please tell me what grave damage to Pakistan is done by the hands of liberals? Are there pubs at the end of every road? They banned burqa, beared, they are producing suicide bombers in the name of secularism? Where in Pakistan do you see liberals 'forcing' alcohol on ordinary Pakistanis? As with appreciating Westernisation, how about all those millions and millions of Pakistanis living the West who go back every year and tell their relatives what a lovely place USA or Europe is? I guess we need some crazy ass religious fundoos in power so all those expats can be banned from coming and spreading Western appreciation. Anyone who spends his entire life working in USA shouldn't have the right to build a Beverly Hills style mansion in Defence because he's an evil liberal who loves America and will turn his entire neighbourhood into consumers of alcohol. In Pakistan, the criticism of 'liberals' is actually another word for envy, thats the impression I get. You can't get buy a mansion in posh areas, so lets just curse and hate all those who live there cos they must be all evil liberal if you are an aam aadmi meaning who a perfect Muslim.
 
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Rehman Malik has told Sherry Rehman there is intelligence to suggest there is a threat to her life and that she should leave the country. I guess the "liberal extremists" will be exerting their massive influence on society from outside Pakistan now?

Leave Pakistan if you want to live, Malik tells Sherry

By: Tahir Niaz | Published: January 07, 2011 ISLAMABAD - Interior Minister Rehman Malik has advised PPP parliamentarian and former information minister Sherry Rehman to leave the country if she wanted to keep safe from religious extremists.

A source told Pakistan Today on Thursday that Malik telephoned Sherry, who is also in the middle of the controversy over blasphemy laws, to leave the country at the earliest because “fanatics are hell bent to take her life due to her views on blasphemy laws”. Malik cited intelligence reports that warned that extremists were after Sherry’s life and advised her to go abroad for the time being. The source said Sherry, however, declined to leave the country. She told Malik that she would not be attending the National Assembly session on Thursday due to inadequate security in the federal capital. She also told Malik that she felt more secure in Karachi rather than Islamabad.

This news was published in print paper. To access the complete paper of this day. click here

http://pakistantoday.com.pk/pakista...kistan-if-you-want-to-live-Malik-tells-Sherry
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ShehryarK said:
bhai no one in the government is supporting this murder!! In fact, the govt is calling him a "shaheed" of their party and making huge political capital from it.

Rehman Malik himself spoke yesterday and today condemning the murder and praising Taseer.


To be honest, that's irrelevant. If something is bad, its bad even if the whole world thinks its ok. And vice versa - if something is good, the world thinking it bad is meaningless.

In this case, glorifying murder is wrong. Full stop. Regardless of whether the world condemns it or condones it.
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I was just talking about Rehman Malik saying he himself would shoot a blasphemer. I read he has clarified his statements or something.

The point of the photo was about public perception of pakistan. When people around the world see that a killer has been garlanded it does not create the right impression. Public sentiment is what drives policy everywhere. There is anger everytime US gives Aid to Pakistan. You yourself saw the response to the floods, donations from the public were at an all time low.

This should have been handled better in the public.
 
sanakazmi said:
Rehman Malik has told Sherry Rehman there is intelligence to suggest there is a threat to her life and that she should leave the country. I guess the "liberal extremists" will be exerting their massive influence on society from outside Pakistan now?
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Get rid of this idiot! He's the interior minister and he's asking people to leave the country because he can't protect them?? He should be ensuring her security not asking her to leave Pakistan.
 
PerfectionPersonified said:
hope next qadri aims at zardari
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Benefit = Looted money will never be recoeved, A few hundred thousand shops, business, buses, human will be set alight. All Pak airports and stattions will be renamed "Zardari Shaheed" and our qaum will get a new HERO in Zardari.

Go kill him if you want.....:P
 
Waseem said:
Benefit = Looted money will never be recoeved, A few hundred thousand shops, business, buses, human will be set alight. All Pak airports and stattions will be renamed "Zardari Shaheed" and our qaum will get a new HERO in Zardari.

Go kill him if you want.....:P
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atleast is duniya se kuch to wazn kam hoga na, especially if of some devil zardari.....
 
FastBowler said:
Quite simply, in Urdu, secularism is translated as laadeeniyat, no one would accept that. Pakistanis are conservative, but they are not averse to many of the concepts of secularism, one of their main issues is its Urdu translation, which is misleading and wrong, and also the common image that this will lead to a Westernized lifestyle away from Islam.
And Maula Jutt, what insaftak was saying was that people don't care about different concepts or ideologies, they just want security, homes, food, it doesn't matter under what ideology this comes to them. And I agree with him. Look at Zia, I disagree with certain acts of his, such as bringing Islam to the forefront (started by Bhutto, it would have happened without Zia anyways) but he raised the stock of the average Pakistani more than any other leader up till that point, so I support what he did overall. Or Ayub Khan, he vastly improved Pakistan in every respect, even if he wasn't completely democratic. So results matter, not systems and ideologies. That's what insaftak was saying.
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I think you're talking about TGK, not insaftak, as I responded to TGK's post.

Here is the crux of the confusion we are having in reading each other's posts. What some posters like TGK and you and many others are claiming is that there is this kind of extreme reaction because there is frustration in society due to lack of basic rights and facilities. And there is truth in what you all say.

But here is where I disagree - Had I been watching people here in the country around me celebrating his death because the guy was corrupt or a part of the government that is evil, I would have understood and agreed wholeheartedly.

But that's not the reason I'm hearing for the jubilations around me. I guess many here are forgetting the matter on which this whole thing started. And that is Aasia Bibi's case and the issue of 'Namoos-e-Risalat'. People here have confused the striking of blasphemy law due shady legal system, with wanting the freedom to abuse Prophet. Which is not the case. And hence, because of this guy's actions and the resulting reaction from the general public and media, whoever is against this law for whatever reason, is now 'Waajib-ul-Qatal'.

Whoever is taking the stand against these laws for whatever reason, be it Sherry Rahman, Imran Khan, or someone like me who want these laws to be amended not because I want the freedom to abuse the Prophet, but because I know that this law gets abused a lot, is basically 'Wajib-ul-Qatal' and no one needs to think twice before killing any of us without any fear.

In fact, if one wants to get famous and have garlands thrown at him, he should look up a rich person who drinks alcohol in some posh area and kill him in broad daylight. Instead of getting punished, he will become a celebrity for serving Islam.

Do none of you see what's wrong with this picture and what the long term consequences of this are, not only on the image of our religion but also on the future of this society?

Ideologies are a very dangerous thing and it is a great error if a society says, 'who cares about ideology, just give us food and shelter first.' Zia and Bhutto might have had their good points, but their advantages were short term. It's the long term fruit we are cutting right now that was sown in those times. Have we learned nothing from history?

We can put the 'liberal versus conservative' argument on the back burner till we get these basic necessities, but at least let's not encourage such blatant murders in the name of religion in the meantime, making excuses for it. Condemn the politicians, but condemn this murder too. Let's call a spade a spade, shall we?
 
the Great Khan said:
no im trying to explain what I percieve ,from reading and speaking to individuals , the general viewpoint..from many people..and no im not supporting his actions..dont try to turn things around here as is the norm with some people..
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You were telling exactly what the problem is but not really providing any solutions. As I said, I quoted and responded to your post specifically because I wanted to give solutions to them in the best way I thought possible, for the general readership of this forum. And that solution is basically to call it as it is and when people celebrate this murder, for the reason that it was a service to Islam, inform them that their reason for celebration is wrong and condemn it. Because if people see no opposite reaction, it will confirm this attitude as the right attitude to them, which will harm our society in the long term. Of course, my post was directed to people who actually consider this murder wrong in the first place. And as you mentioned yourself, you are one of them, which I'm glad to know.


youve completley mis understood the whole post..and im not gonna explain it line by line..the secular elite do have power and so do rightwing conservatives like qadri..thats just a fact..Taseer and his ilk are responsible for the alot of the lawlessness in our society but thats not because he's secular..however the fact that he was just made it worse..my post is a reflection on perception..
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It's alright.
 
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Sherry Rehman did MUCH more work as a human rights activist whereas Taseer was a newcomer in the field.

I hope she leaves for her safety,can you really trust Rehman Malik with your life ? Go to the UAE or London and launch human rights protests from there.
 
Yeah you're absolutely right, I'm all for scrapping or at least amending the blasphemy law. And I also think Taseer's murder was a tragedy since he was the governor of our province, but at the same time, what I was saying and what I think insaftak was saying in that post of his was that nobody actually cares what system they live in as long as it provides for them and they can live respectable lives and hold their heads up high. This wasn't in response to the blasphemy law, but in response to the direction the discussion was veering towards, which was the overall ideology and system of governance of Pakistan.
 
FastBowler said:
Yeah you're absolutely right, I'm all for scrapping or at least amending the blasphemy law. And I also think Taseer's murder was a tragedy since he was the governor of our province, but at the same time, what I was saying and what I think insaftak was saying in that post of his was that nobody actually cares what system they live in as long as it provides for them and they can live respectable lives and hold their heads up high. This wasn't in response to the blasphemy law, but in response to the direction the discussion was veering towards, which was the overall ideology and system of governance of Pakistan.
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Thats such a simple view and which is not even right on many levels. You think people's brain will become dead once their stomachs are full?

*I know you didn't say that*.
 
MC said:
Thats such a simple view and which is not even right on many levels. You think people's brain will become dead once their stomachs are full?

*I know you didn't say that*.
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Yeah I didn't say that. But the immediate concern for people is not lofty philosophies and ideals, but rather actually, as Bhutto put it, Roti, Kapra, Makan. The rest is secondary.
 
here is qadri reciting naat.

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That man Qadri is a vile disgusting murderer and a coward, gunning down an unarmed man with a sub machine gun.

To put it very politely, the full force of the law should fall on him hard.
 
hasanb said:
That man Qadri is a vile disgusting murderer and a coward, gunning down an unarmed man with a sub machine gun.

To put it very politely, the full force of the law should fall on him hard.
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Would you like to prosecute him or preside as a judge in his trial? According to the latest news, nobody is willing to preside as judge or become the state prosecutor for Qadri.
 
If I had the relevant qualifications then yes I would most definitely like to be part of the prosecution.
 
Desire said:
here is qadri reciting naat.

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He reflects a segment of the society..................that can not be ignored.........root cause has to be understood
 
When the State doesnt look after its own affairs then individuals and groups take control...

There is no respect for rule of law and that is with reason and consequently you get an anarchaic society...

The former Soviet Union on its dissolution became ruled essentially by gangsters...this is typical of any broken state...

Pakistan is no different...rather than gangs control is with Islamic groupings...

couple questions I have...incidentally those critical of 'extremists' and their assassinations...are you trying to suggest the state doesnt act with impunity and doesnt act unjustly?...the state has no respect for rule of law and yet you malign citizens for thinking let me do what I want to do...

Guys are busy getting killed by their own people cos master USA is asking them to and you expect them to respect law and order....puhleeze

Its ok to kill 'extremists' who spread violence but its wrong to kill peace loving liberals who kill extremists'...I see it now lol...
 
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The Pakistani academic, Hasan Askari Rizvi, who writes with a great deal of wisdom on Pakistan, is quoted on the BBC as saying,

"The radical element, which uses violence as a political tool, is limited in numbers...But the mindset that sustains militancy, that dilutes or prevents action against it - I think that has become fairly widespread."

He concludes by saying "If we really want sanity to return to our society, we will have to establish a long-term dialogue through educational institutions, the media and all sections of the society, and facilitate a fusion of ideas.

"If we allow the liberal and the religious streams to continue on separate paths, we risk aggravating social conflict."

There is much food for though here.

I find it distressing that "a great faith tradition" in the words of eminent historian, Ian Talbot, "rich in humanity, culture and a sense of social justice", is used to justify such atrocious acts.
 
KB said:
The Pakistani academic, Hasan Askari Rizvi, who writes with a great deal of wisdom on Pakistan, is quoted on the BBC as saying,

"The radical element, which uses violence as a political tool, is limited in numbers...But the mindset that sustains militancy, that dilutes or prevents action against it - I think that has become fairly widespread."
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Golden words. And absolutely spot on.
 
shaykh1985 said:
Its ok to kill 'extremists' who spread violence but its wrong to kill peace loving liberals who kill extremists'...I see it now lol...
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This is the problem pretty much with most Pakistanis. The picking of sides and then closing eyes of every wrong doing by your own side while blaming everything wrong on the other. No wonder we are in this state.

If we kick this bias out of our minds and take a look at things around us, we'll find that our many of the enemies of both 'extremists' and 'liberals' are mutual.

Though this kind of reaction of 'us vs them' from many in our country is not coming as a surprise to me. Pakistan has always been, since its inception till today, a reactionary state.
 
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MJ, shaykh1985 makes a very good point though.

The ruling liberal elite are as extreme as their religious cousins. The elites have tried to perform a gigantic con job buy deluded the public, a con job that continues to this day; that their rule is wise and just. A democracy, in principle is defined by the voice of the people being reflected at parliamentary level. Yet this is not the case when the parasites (elites) live a life of luxury consumption feeding of the host while at the same time granting themselves power, status, prestige, and material security while the common man is dipping roti in water to feed himself.

Should this man been killed for the reasons given. Certainly not. But SK and TGK have made some awesome posts that to an extent reflect what I believe. The public, our families, your fellow brothers and sisters are sacrificing their lives for their rule and materialistic good. What sacrifices have the elites made for the land? None.
 
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Maula Jutt said:
This is the problem pretty much with most Pakistanis. The picking of sides and then closing eyes of every wrong doing by your own side while blaming everything wrong on the other. No wonder we are in this state.

If we kick this bias out of our minds and take a look at things around us, we'll find that our many of the enemies of both 'extremists' and 'liberals' are mutual.

Though this kind of reaction of 'us vs them' from many in our country is not coming as a surprise to me. Pakistan has always been, since its inception till today, a reactionary state.
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Obviously I am an outsider so I can only go by what I read but I see similarities between the likes of Pakistan and Somalia...if im completely off then please put me in my place...sorry if its a bit long...

This is generally how affairs have gone in Somalia...its been anarchaic for a long time but found a degree of stablity through 'moderate' Islamists...Al Shabab were very fringe at the time...and in a society that hadnt seen any sort of law and order in years things were finally starting to look up for Somalia...

Now post 9/11 the USA decided a moderate Islamic leadership that had managed to bring calm to such a volatile state required a change of leadership...the fact that this was a non violent Muslim faction was of no interest to the USA so they decided to help the old enemy of Somalia Ethiopia invade Somalia and even thought we might as well add a few bombs of out own...

They then did the worst thing imaginable and that was to put in a pro Ethiopia ruler...they put in a hated minority whose primary role was as a Western warlord and not to look after the needs of the people...rather it was to look after their interests and ensure Islam was kept away from the establishment...

Now the shame of losing a popular government to one who openly prioritised the needs of one group over the masses was too much for the public to take and this produced a vacuum that Al Shabab filled...non violent Islamic ideals ended up becoming militant Islamic ideals...and part of this catalyst was that the client regime ruled its society by force...and generally acted with impunity...its role was to ensure Islam was kept at bay...and this essentially created it in a militant form...and violence from the state brought the same values from its populace...

Al Shabab with their military support now have control over Mogadishu and are now in battle with various other factions of various ideologies and what is one of the most dangerous places in the world...

Pakistan for me since the war with Afghanistan has gone down a similar route...I remember at the time Cameron suggested Pakistan wasnt committed to the War on Terror 40,000 Pakistani military and civilians had died...

The West essentially requested Pakistan to initiate a civil war with its Islamic populace...the miitary that were supposed to protect the sovereignty of the state and the people were now attacking its own...much like Al Shabab got their vacuum so did the militant Islamic wings in Pakistan...individuals who were on the fence before were now rejecting liberal ideals and moving towards the Islamists who were fighting for the rights of the people whilst the US client rulers Mushi and now Zardari prioritised the need of their own elite and their Western masters....attacking ones own people was never going to go well...and once you overstep that line then your society itself will crumble...violence begets violence...

And thats where I say so called liberals which gives the impression of peace and diplomacy can not be applicable here...the state is no different than the pro Ethiopia warlord...you cant attack your own people and call yourself peace loving liberals...its also unreasonable to expect those under attack to utilise qualities of diplomacy and negotiation when the state doesnt do much of it itself...the Islamists are vying for power and the impression I get is that they atleast have tacit support against the state....

The state has lost its legitimacy or maybe it never had it in the first place...Pakistan seems all the more volatile in some ways because to my knowledge...you can help clarify there is no specific Islamist group that holds consensus amongst the people which means a lot of groups vying for power against each other as well as the state...

What is the most tragic about all of this is that if there is any sort of Islamic change it wont be Islamic based it wont be much different from the clan like situation that Somalia has which is based more around doing what it can to hold onto power against all the other groupings...the liberal groups incidentally in Somalia are now either not in existence or have to paradoxically also fight for power...and I can see the same happening in Pakistan...there is no moral victory...just a fight for survival...

I paint a very bleak picture and I hope I'm wrong but I notice too many similarities and can see Pakistan going down the road of outright lawlessness and warlordism...
 
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The reason those points are invalid is because its suddenly become convenient for those of a more conservative leaning to start labelling anyone even moderately liberal as a liberal extremist. Most of the people called thus are definitely not liberal extremists, on the other hand, most of the people called religious extremists are so. Salman Taseer was most definitely not a liberal extremist. People can call someone like Nadeem Paracha or hasanb liberal extremists, it can actually be true.
 
FastBowler said:
The reason those points are invalid is because its suddenly become convenient for those of a more conservative leaning to start labelling anyone even moderately liberal as a liberal extremist. Most of the people called thus are definitely not liberal extremists, on the other hand, most of the people called religious extremists are so. Salman Taseer was most definitely not a liberal extremist. People can call someone like Nadeem Paracha or hasanb liberal extremists, it can actually be true.
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Is this a reply to my post?...

I havent argued rights and wrongs...I'v suggested that with the breakdown of law and order violence becomes the order of the day amongst all groupings...the underlying issues are less specifically ideological rather the criteria is simply difference and survival...

Taseers group leaning take more credence than his explicit personal views...its PPP v Islamists or have I got that wrong?...

The PPP utilises the military for violence against the people...by not professing direct violence yourself by being a member of such an organisation ie one that Islamists view as illegitimate means your fair game...

There are plenty in violent Islamic organisations who are not specificially violent either but membership implies tacit approval of the means and acts of your chosen group and they also will be targeted as such...

Maybe I have oversimplified but group imo tends to matter more than specific ideology...a catalyst is different from the actual reason for death which appears to be a simple PPP are the enemy thing imo...

If someone targets Al Shabab members now they just target a member...obviously some will be preferable over others but killing one of the enemy is an achievement nevertheless...
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/opinion/09taseer.html?hp

My father died for Pakistan
Shehrbanoo Taseer

Lahore, Pakistan

TWENTY-SEVEN. That’s the number of bullets a police guard fired into my father before surrendering himself with a sinister smile to the policemen around him. Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, was assassinated on Tuesday — my brother Shehryar’s 25th birthday — outside a market near our family home in Islamabad.

The guard accused of the killing, Mumtaz Qadri, was assigned that morning to protect my father while he was in the federal capital. According to officials, around 4:15 p.m., as my father was about to step into his car after lunch, Mr. Qadri opened fire.

Mr. Qadri and his supporters may have felled a great oak that day, but they are sadly mistaken if they think they have succeeded in silencing my father’s voice or the voices of millions like him who believe in the secular vision of Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

My father’s life was one of struggle. He was a self-made man, who made and lost and remade his fortune. He was among the first members of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party when it was founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the late 1960s. He was an intellectual, a newspaper publisher and a writer; he was jailed and tortured for his belief in democracy and freedom. The vile dictatorship of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq did not take kindly to his pamphleteering for the restoration of democracy.

One particularly brutal imprisonment was in a dungeon at Lahore Fort, this city’s Mughal-era citadel. My father was held in solitary confinement for months and was slipped a single meal of half a plate of stewed lentils each day. They told my mother, in her early 20s at the time, that he was dead. She never believed that.

Determined, she made friends with the kind man who used to sweep my father’s cell and asked him to pass a note to her husband. My father later told me he swallowed the note, fearing for the sweeper’s life. He scribbled back a reassuring message to my mother: “I’m not made from a wood that burns easily.” That is the kind of man my father was. He could not be broken.

He often quoted verse by his uncle Faiz Ahmed Faiz, one of Urdu’s greatest poets. “Even if you’ve got shackles on your feet, go. Be fearless and walk. Stand for your cause even if you are martyred,” wrote Faiz. Especially as governor, my father was the first to speak up and stand beside those who had suffered, from the thousands of people displaced by the Kashmir earthquake in 2005 to the family of two teenage brothers who were lynched by a mob last August in Sialkot after a dispute at a cricket match.

After 86 members of the Ahmadi sect, considered blasphemous by fundamentalists, were murdered in attacks on two of their mosques in Lahore last May, to the great displeasure of the religious right my father visited the survivors in the hospital. When the floods devastated Pakistan last summer, he was on the go, rallying businessmen for aid, consoling the homeless and building shelters.

My father believed that the strict blasphemy laws instituted by General Zia have been frequently misused and ought to be changed. His views were widely misrepresented to give the false impression that he had spoken against Prophet Mohammad. This was untrue, and a criminal abdication of responsibility by his critics, who must now think about what they have caused to happen. According to the authorities, my father’s stand on the blasphemy law was what drove Mr. Qadri to kill him.

There are those who say my father’s death was the final nail in the coffin for a tolerant Pakistan. That Pakistan’s liberal voices will now be silenced. But we buried a heroic man, not the courage he inspired in others. This week two leading conservative politicians — former Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and the cricket-star-turned-politician Imran Khan — have taken the same position my father held on the blasphemy laws: they want amendments to prevent misuse.

To say that there was a security lapse on Tuesday is an understatement. My father was brutally gunned down by a man hired to protect him. Juvenal once asked, “Who will guard the guards themselves?” It is a question all Pakistanis should ask themselves today: If the extremists could get to the governor of the largest province, is anyone safe?

It may sound odd, but I can’t imagine my father dying in any other way. Everything he had, he invested in Pakistan, giving livelihoods to tens of thousands, improving the economy. My father believed in our country’s potential. He lived and died for Pakistan. To honor his memory, those who share that belief in Pakistan’s future must not stay silent about injustice. We must never be afraid of our enemies. We must never let them win.

Shehrbano Taseer is a reporter with Newsweek Pakistan.
 
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saadibaba said:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/opinion/09taseer.html?hp

My father died for Pakistan
Shehrbanoo Taseer

Lahore, Pakistan

TWENTY-SEVEN. That’s the number of bullets a police guard fired into my father before surrendering himself with a sinister smile to the policemen around him. Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, was assassinated on Tuesday — my brother Shehryar’s 25th birthday — outside a market near our family home in Islamabad.

The guard accused of the killing, Mumtaz Qadri, was assigned that morning to protect my father while he was in the federal capital. According to officials, around 4:15 p.m., as my father was about to step into his car after lunch, Mr. Qadri opened fire.

Mr. Qadri and his supporters may have felled a great oak that day, but they are sadly mistaken if they think they have succeeded in silencing my father’s voice or the voices of millions like him who believe in the secular vision of Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

My father’s life was one of struggle. He was a self-made man, who made and lost and remade his fortune. He was among the first members of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party when it was founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the late 1960s. He was an intellectual, a newspaper publisher and a writer; he was jailed and tortured for his belief in democracy and freedom. The vile dictatorship of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq did not take kindly to his pamphleteering for the restoration of democracy.

One particularly brutal imprisonment was in a dungeon at Lahore Fort, this city’s Mughal-era citadel. My father was held in solitary confinement for months and was slipped a single meal of half a plate of stewed lentils each day. They told my mother, in her early 20s at the time, that he was dead. She never believed that.

Determined, she made friends with the kind man who used to sweep my father’s cell and asked him to pass a note to her husband. My father later told me he swallowed the note, fearing for the sweeper’s life. He scribbled back a reassuring message to my mother: “I’m not made from a wood that burns easily.” That is the kind of man my father was. He could not be broken.

He often quoted verse by his uncle Faiz Ahmed Faiz, one of Urdu’s greatest poets. “Even if you’ve got shackles on your feet, go. Be fearless and walk. Stand for your cause even if you are martyred,” wrote Faiz. Especially as governor, my father was the first to speak up and stand beside those who had suffered, from the thousands of people displaced by the Kashmir earthquake in 2005 to the family of two teenage brothers who were lynched by a mob last August in Sialkot after a dispute at a cricket match.

After 86 members of the Ahmadi sect, considered blasphemous by fundamentalists, were murdered in attacks on two of their mosques in Lahore last May, to the great displeasure of the religious right my father visited the survivors in the hospital. When the floods devastated Pakistan last summer, he was on the go, rallying businessmen for aid, consoling the homeless and building shelters.

My father believed that the strict blasphemy laws instituted by General Zia have been frequently misused and ought to be changed. His views were widely misrepresented to give the false impression that he had spoken against Prophet Mohammad. This was untrue, and a criminal abdication of responsibility by his critics, who must now think about what they have caused to happen. According to the authorities, my father’s stand on the blasphemy law was what drove Mr. Qadri to kill him.

There are those who say my father’s death was the final nail in the coffin for a tolerant Pakistan. That Pakistan’s liberal voices will now be silenced. But we buried a heroic man, not the courage he inspired in others. This week two leading conservative politicians — former Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and the cricket-star-turned-politician Imran Khan — have taken the same position my father held on the blasphemy laws: they want amendments to prevent misuse.

To say that there was a security lapse on Tuesday is an understatement. My father was brutally gunned down by a man hired to protect him. Juvenal once asked, “Who will guard the guards themselves?” It is a question all Pakistanis should ask themselves today: If the extremists could get to the governor of the largest province, is anyone safe?

It may sound odd, but I can’t imagine my father dying in any other way. Everything he had, he invested in Pakistan, giving livelihoods to tens of thousands, improving the economy. My father believed in our country’s potential. He lived and died for Pakistan. To honor his memory, those who share that belief in Pakistan’s future must not stay silent about injustice. We must never be afraid of our enemies. We must never let them win.

Shehrbano Taseer is a reporter with Newsweek Pakistan.
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She is a brave person, and may Allah give her the strength to get through this tragedy and spread the tolerant vision of Pakistan. IT is what her father would have wanted from all of us.
 
Excellent article from Nadeem Farooq Paracha

What casualties these are

In the 1970s former prime minister Z A Bhutto once described Pakistan as a social lab to conduct various ‘Islamic experiments’. I don’t know whether Bhutto was being cynical or enthusiastic about this, but yes, it most certainly seems that this is exactly what this unfortunate republic has been all the while.

Forget about secular societies in the West that just can’t make head or tail about the way many Pakistanis behave and react in the name of religion; I have also seen people belonging to various Muslim countries sometimes scratch their heads when contemplating the behaviour of Pakistanis in this context. Are we as a Muslim majority nation really all that unique? For example, why only in Pakistan do people rise up to demand that a particular sect be declared non-Muslim — as if considering everyone else as heretics makes us feel and look more pious?

Why only in Pakistan do people remain quiet when certain man-made ‘Islamic laws’ are openly exploited to conduct personal vendettas against minorities?

Why only in Pakistan do people go on strike when a government even hints at amending such laws, despite the fact that the more sober Islamic scholars have
over and over again termed such laws as having few, if any, historical and theological precedents or justification? Are such laws yet another way for us to loudly mask the glaring social, political and economic hypocrisy that has become a way of life us?

Then, why only in Pakistan do people come out to destroy their own cities and properties for an act of blasphemy taking place thousands of miles away? And
anyway, in this respect, how seriously should the Almighty take a nation that won’t even bother to manage its own garbage dumps or dare speak up against the many gross acts of violence and injustice that take place in their Islamic republic and for which many are ready to burn buses and shoot people?

Why only in Pakistan do many people still consider violent extremists and terrorists to be some kind of gung-ho mujahids fighting nefarious infidels and superpowers, even when on most occasions it is the common Pakistanis that are being slaughtered in their own markets, schools and mosques by these romanticised renegades? Why only in Pakistan, as more and more people now pack mosques, wear hijab, grow beards and lace their sentences with assorted Arabic vocabulary, society, instead of reaping the social and cultural benefits of this show of piety continues to tumble down the spiral as perhaps the most confused and contradictory bunch of people?

Of course, we always have a handy set of excuses for all this. We lash out at ‘Islam’s enemies’ (most of whom exist only in our heads and in our history books); we scorn our politicians and ulema, but at the same time we are ever ready to kill, loot, plunder and go on strikes on the call of these very people. We blame western and Indian cultural influences, but have no clue what to exchange these with. So, unable (rather unwilling) to appreciate the fact that we share an ancient,
rich and regal culture with the rest of the subcontinent, we look towards the Middle East.

We reject our own culture but adopt a half-baked understanding of Arabian culture as our own. No wonder a Pakistani continues to smile and keep quiet about the insults he constantly faces in various oil-rich countries, but he would make a huge hue and cry if and when he faces the same in a European or American city. After all, we are Arabs, and so what if our Arabic is not up to the mark, we’re getting there. But unfortunately, that’s all we’re getting at.

I pity myself and my nation. Each one is now a serious causality of all the brazen experiments that have taken place on us by those who wanted to impose their own concept of Islam in our governments, schools, streets and homes. So the next time you meet a hip, young Pakistani dude quoting a religious text, or a Pakistani who stops you from jogging at a park because he wants you to join him for prayers (you can’t ask him to join you for jogging, though), or a burqa-clad woman claiming she is a better woman than the one who does not wear a burqa, or watch a cooking show host talking more about God than the biryani she is cooking, or a bearded barber advising you not to shave, just forgive them all.

Treat us as causalities of the faith which we ourselves have distorted beyond recognition. A faith that was supposed to make us a vibrant, progressive and tolerant set of people, has, instead, and due to our own warped understanding of it, turned us into a horde of very ripe looking vegetables.


http://www.dawn.com/2011/01/09/smokers’-corner-what-casualties-these-are.html
 
Liberty said:
MJ, shaykh1985 makes a very good point though.

The ruling liberal elite are as extreme as their religious cousins. The elites have tried to perform a gigantic con job buy deluded the public, a con job that continues to this day; that their rule is wise and just. A democracy, in principle is defined by the voice of the people being reflected at parliamentary level. Yet this is not the case when the parasites (elites) live a life of luxury consumption feeding of the host while at the same time granting themselves power, status, prestige, and material security while the common man is dipping roti in water to feed himself.

Should this man been killed for the reasons given. Certainly not. But SK and TGK have made some awesome posts that to an extent reflect what I believe. The public, our families, your fellow brothers and sisters are sacrificing their lives for their rule and materialistic good. What sacrifices have the elites made for the land? None.
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I agree with both of them and you that yes, an element of this frustration exists in society because of the lifestyles of the elite here. If you read my posts on the first page of this thread, you will see that my initial reaction when evenryone else was doing the ol' "May his soul rest in peace" bit, was the same stand. That these elites don't care about the common man and let the lawlessness take over to exploit it for their own means, but forget that the same lawlessness can come bite them in the a** one day.

However, there are two things that I find wrong in the general public reacion.

1) The reason for celebration on his murder is wrong. Plain and simple. Had anyone said they are happy because he was part of the elite group and they are paying the price for ingoring the rights of the common man, I would have understood, even though I would still consider the murder wrong in principle. But I would have understood. However, that's not the case. The reasons given are quite extreme and religiously motivated, not socially motivated. I find this a very dangerous development. It should be discouraged.

2) Even though liberals have some sway in their private circles, there is no way they can have any effect on the general public. The hold of the conservative elements is quite strong and it will be decades before there can even be an equal force of liberalism to be pitched against conservatism to have a meaningful clash. Right now, there is no liberalism other than outside the private drawing rooms of sone families. They have almost zero power in the Pakistani society.


By the way, I use the term 'liberalism' in the way it is generally percieved in our society. The real meaning of liberalism, just like the definition of secularism, is lost on our public.

Many among our people will find the fact surprising that a young woman in burqa standing up in a classroom to question the teacher on a societal belief is more liberal than a high society trophy wife of a rich businessman who dances with his friends to advance her husband's career, but doesn't have the freedom or courage to tell him to stop pimping her.
 
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shaykh1985 said:
Is this a reply to my post?...

I havent argued rights and wrongs...I'v suggested that with the breakdown of law and order violence becomes the order of the day amongst all groupings...the underlying issues are less specifically ideological rather the criteria is simply difference and survival...

Taseers group leaning take more credence than his explicit personal views...its PPP v Islamists or have I got that wrong?...

The PPP utilises the military for violence against the people...by not professing direct violence yourself by being a member of such an organisation ie one that Islamists view as illegitimate means your fair game...

There are plenty in violent Islamic organisations who are not specificially violent either but membership implies tacit approval of the means and acts of your chosen group and they also will be targeted as such...

Maybe I have oversimplified but group imo tends to matter more than specific ideology...a catalyst is different from the actual reason for death which appears to be a simple PPP are the enemy thing imo...

If someone targets Al Shabab members now they just target a member...obviously some will be preferable over others but killing one of the enemy is an achievement nevertheless...
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You are right in Somalia's case. I am familiar with its history too. And I agree with you about it as far as USA interference is concerned.

However, the gross mistake you are making in comparing Somalia and Pakistan is that you are taking Pakistani ruling elite as liberal. Which they are not.

Our people need to understand that ruling elite does not equal liberal.

Our ruling elite also included the likes of General Zia and the MMA. When JI wins, it is the ruling elite in its constituency. Are these liberal entities? No. They are the ruling elites. Same way, those who consider PPP or those senators and ministers who don't have beards or who wear make up and revealing clothes as liberals are wrong. Liberalism, or conservatism, for that matter, does not depend on appearance. It's the thought and action of the person which makes him either one. A prime minister who drinks in his house with friends and dances in private parties but passes a law that condemns speaking out for your rights is a conservative. A hypocrite one. Our ruling elite has NEVER been liberal.

Money and power makes a person elite, not liberal. Same way, you will find many liberals who spend their whole lives in a 2 room flat. Many teachers, professors and ordinary people fall in this category.

Our people need to realize this difference so they know who is the enemy and who is a friend. We'll find that most of our enemies are from within ourselves only.
 
saadibaba said:
Excellent article from Nadeem Farooq Paracha

What casualties these are

In the 1970s former prime minister Z A Bhutto once described Pakistan as a social lab to conduct various ‘Islamic experiments’. I don’t know whether Bhutto was being cynical or enthusiastic about this, but yes, it most certainly seems that this is exactly what this unfortunate republic has been all the while.

Forget about secular societies in the West that just can’t make head or tail about the way many Pakistanis behave and react in the name of religion; I have also seen people belonging to various Muslim countries sometimes scratch their heads when contemplating the behaviour of Pakistanis in this context. Are we as a Muslim majority nation really all that unique? For example, why only in Pakistan do people rise up to demand that a particular sect be declared non-Muslim — as if considering everyone else as heretics makes us feel and look more pious?

Why only in Pakistan do people remain quiet when certain man-made ‘Islamic laws’ are openly exploited to conduct personal vendettas against minorities?

Why only in Pakistan do people go on strike when a government even hints at amending such laws, despite the fact that the more sober Islamic scholars have
over and over again termed such laws as having few, if any, historical and theological precedents or justification? Are such laws yet another way for us to loudly mask the glaring social, political and economic hypocrisy that has become a way of life us?

Then, why only in Pakistan do people come out to destroy their own cities and properties for an act of blasphemy taking place thousands of miles away? And
anyway, in this respect, how seriously should the Almighty take a nation that won’t even bother to manage its own garbage dumps or dare speak up against the many gross acts of violence and injustice that take place in their Islamic republic and for which many are ready to burn buses and shoot people?

Why only in Pakistan do many people still consider violent extremists and terrorists to be some kind of gung-ho mujahids fighting nefarious infidels and superpowers, even when on most occasions it is the common Pakistanis that are being slaughtered in their own markets, schools and mosques by these romanticised renegades? Why only in Pakistan, as more and more people now pack mosques, wear hijab, grow beards and lace their sentences with assorted Arabic vocabulary, society, instead of reaping the social and cultural benefits of this show of piety continues to tumble down the spiral as perhaps the most confused and contradictory bunch of people?

Of course, we always have a handy set of excuses for all this. We lash out at ‘Islam’s enemies’ (most of whom exist only in our heads and in our history books); we scorn our politicians and ulema, but at the same time we are ever ready to kill, loot, plunder and go on strikes on the call of these very people. We blame western and Indian cultural influences, but have no clue what to exchange these with. So, unable (rather unwilling) to appreciate the fact that we share an ancient,
rich and regal culture with the rest of the subcontinent, we look towards the Middle East.

We reject our own culture but adopt a half-baked understanding of Arabian culture as our own. No wonder a Pakistani continues to smile and keep quiet about the insults he constantly faces in various oil-rich countries, but he would make a huge hue and cry if and when he faces the same in a European or American city. After all, we are Arabs, and so what if our Arabic is not up to the mark, we’re getting there. But unfortunately, that’s all we’re getting at.

I pity myself and my nation. Each one is now a serious causality of all the brazen experiments that have taken place on us by those who wanted to impose their own concept of Islam in our governments, schools, streets and homes. So the next time you meet a hip, young Pakistani dude quoting a religious text, or a Pakistani who stops you from jogging at a park because he wants you to join him for prayers (you can’t ask him to join you for jogging, though), or a burqa-clad woman claiming she is a better woman than the one who does not wear a burqa, or watch a cooking show host talking more about God than the biryani she is cooking, or a bearded barber advising you not to shave, just forgive them all.

Treat us as causalities of the faith which we ourselves have distorted beyond recognition. A faith that was supposed to make us a vibrant, progressive and tolerant set of people, has, instead, and due to our own warped understanding of it, turned us into a horde of very ripe looking vegetables.


http://www.dawn.com/2011/01/09/smokers’-corner-what-casualties-these-are.html
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Great article, time for Pakistan as a society to do some soul searching. But we need the right leadership for this to happen.
 
Maula Jutt said:
You are right in Somalia's case. I am familiar with its history too. And I agree with you about it as far as USA interference is concerned.

However, the gross mistake you are making in comparing Somalia and Pakistan is that you are taking Pakistani ruling elite as liberal. Which they are not.

Our people need to understand that ruling elite does not equal liberal.

Our ruling elite also included the likes of General Zia and the MMA. When JI wins, it is the ruling elite in its constituency. Are these liberal entities? No. They are the ruling elites. Same way, those who consider PPP or those senators and ministers who don't have beards or who wear make up and revealing clothes as liberals are wrong. Liberalism, or conservatism, for that matter, does not depend on appearance. It's the thought and action of the person which makes him either one. A prime minister who drinks in his house with friends and dances in private parties but passes a law that condemns speaking out for your rights is a conservative. A hypocrite one. Our ruling elite has NEVER been liberal.

Money and power makes a person elite, not liberal. Same way, you will find many liberals who spend their whole lives in a 2 room flat. Many teachers, professors and ordinary people fall in this category.

Our people need to realize this difference so they know who is the enemy and who is a friend. We'll find that most of our enemies are from within ourselves only.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the clarification about the leaders...I dont think I stated that I believed anyone was liberal...in fairness I dont think 'liberal' states are liberal...they appear liberal because of their standing in the world and who their allies are...every system of belief implies a lack of acceptance of another one...

One of the examples I gave was of the IOC which was viewed as illiberal because of their Islamic ideals...that despite being the one group who brought a degree of peace and stability to Somalia...
The so called liberals who were sponsored by the USA did so through invading Somalia and removing a popular government...this state ruled by force but was viewed as a legitimate government because of whos needs they met...

My actual point was that most of these groups are much like the groups they fight against but by virtue of being friends with the West one can be viewed worldwide as a liberal leader...obviously it doesnt mean you are...

Also one of the comparisons I made with Somalia is post US intervention ideology doesnt matter anymore and survival becomes priority...

Islamic groups fight for their survival and so does the ruling elite and like Somalia all of this is done through force....

Liberalism as rule is a myth really and with the US intervention of Afghanistan even getting close to that anything resembling that ideal seems impossible...

In my eyes with the breakdown of state ideology dies completely so that is Islam as an intellectual ideal and the alternative liberal ideals...future isnt bright when survival becomes your reason for functioning...any ideas as to positive steps for change or do you feel its too far gone?...
 
Interesting article regarding the Taseer assassination named ''A blood-dimmed tide'' in The News by Ghazi Salahuddin,well worth a read

http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=24783&Cat=9&dt=1/9/2011

Shaken by the assassination of Salmaan Taseer in a high-end market in Islamabad on the fourth day of the New Year, many of us have been struggling to contend with the message that it bears for the future of Pakistan. And it is not just the brutality of that murder most foul that disturbs the mind. What has followed in the abject display of admiration for the murderer and the response of so many religious leaders presents a dreadful portrait of our society.

Logically, the assassination and its aftermath should have compelled our rulers to reflect on the existing state of affairs and make an attempt to understand the implications of this obvious surge in religious extremism and intolerance. I keep wondering about what our military leaders would be thinking about this situation, considering that they have to bear some responsibility for promoting and protecting this trend. What, for instance, are the thoughts of our erudite chief of the army staff? Is the military top brass engaged in any serious appraisal of a situation that has a bearing on our national security?

We may also refer to the ability of our politicians to comprehend and then deal with the challenges that Salmaan Taseer’s assassination has posed to the survival of a democratic system that is rooted in the freedom of thought and expression and in the cultivation of an environment in which rational debate is possible. But, ah, they seem rather powerless in shaping our national priorities. We know where the levers of power are located and who calls the shots when the chips are down.

Also, the politicians must dance to the tune of popular opinion and in the absence of any concerted efforts to educate or enlighten the populace, the clandestinely empowered Islamists, though still devoid of majority support, are able to intimidate even the supposedly liberal and democratic parties. The manner in which the Pakistan People’s Party has sought to camouflage the meaning and the significance of Salmaan Taseer’s admittedly courageous stance is a plot that would be fitting for a Greek tragedy. Even otherwise, the quality of governance and the propensity for corruption that our political rulers have demonstrated is in itself a tragic tale.

There is this intriguing attempt to ignore the antagonistic social division that the event has brought into a sharp focus, in spite of the fact that political parties of the ilk of the PPP, ANP and the MQM are morally bound to confront socially regressive and bigoted elements in society. In fact, the repeated policies of appeasement by our rulers have led us to the brink of disaster. This process, sadly, was launched by the founder of the PPP.

Anyhow, now that we are perched on the very edge of the precipice, what is to be done to salvage the option of creating a liberal, socially plural, egalitarian and democratic polity in Pakistan? This question is to be posed with the presumption that our ‘establishment’ has nurtured some factions of religious extremists – the so-called assets – only for tactical purposes and that it still believes in a Pakistan that keeps pace with the modern world and is mindful of the natural aspirations of the people of this country for peace and economic development.

A forbidding thought comes to mind: does the ‘establishment’ have the necessary intellectual resources to be able to understand the crisis of Pakistan with an open mind and in the light of historical and contemporary realities? As individuals, we may safely presume, many senior functionaries would have doubts about policies that have led to our present impasse. Perhaps the social divide that has acquired a deadly dimension at this time also pervades the higher levels of the establishment. What matters, however, is its collective mind and its deep-rooted biases – so deep-rooted that some major shifts in domestic and regional affairs have apparently not touched the contours of our national security policies.

What has happened in the wake of the murder of Salmaan Taseer is alarming in the specific context of the range of intolerance and extremism in Pakistan. We were always aware of the fundamental divide between the liberal and the orthodox, militant forces. We were also conscious of the fact that a rational dialogue between the two sides was difficult because of intolerance and prevalence of violence in society. Still, what we have now is devastating in its possible consequences.

When the floods came some months ago, we were astonished to see the deprivations of those who had been herded into relief camps. It was a kind of revelation. A similar revelation about the dominance of obscurantism in our society has now hit us. So much so that a cloud of fear has descended across the land, leaving so many liberate and moderate people to wonder if Pakistan is their country, too. The issue is not whether this country is safe for democracy. Also threatened is the culture of civility and human values and open-minded discourse.

Obviously, this is a situation that should readily attract the attention of our rulers, including the elected ones. Even though the blasphemy law has become an urgent point of reference, the basic issue is the surge in religious extremism and intolerance. Is this not an existential threat to the survival of Pakistan? And how can we deal with this threat?

Looking at it from another angle, it seems that the problem is not so much the rise of extremism as it is the continuing decline in our intellectual and humanistic values. Our social indicators remain very dismal. The scope for cultural and artistic creativity as well as appreciation is shrinking. The mass media, catering to the lowest common denominator, is reinforcing this trend. In the first place, we cannot provide universal primary education. Then, the ones who are able to go to school do not acquire any meaningful education. Our educational institutions do not encourage learning in its real sense.

To return to what I said at the outset, shouldn’t our military leaders who seem to have a veto power in defining our national sense of direction, be worried about this state of affairs? Can they not collaborate with our civilian rulers to at least make a serious review of what is happening to this country in its immortal yearning for peace and social justice?

The point is that the present drift is frightening in its potential to subvert the initial vision of Pakistan as a modern, moderate and democratic country. The political scene, too, is promoting instability and social discord. Against this flaming backdrop, the impression that any one who has the courage of his convictions is very likely to be silenced would tend to suppress the very spirit of resistance to forces of death and destruction.
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ShehryarK said:
Ridiculous and even laughable nonsense - self-serving, pompous, grandiose and silly - basically, as expected from this family. :)
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This girls father was brutally murdered recently. Even if you hate Salman Taseer and his family,please show some sensitivity. The smily face at the end of your post is quite disturbing. Have some sympathy as a fellow human being. Thanks.
 
saadibaba said:
This girls father was brutally murdered recently. Even if you hate Salman Taseer and his family,please show some sensitivity. The smily face at the end of your post is quite disturbing. Have some sympathy as a fellow human being. Thanks.
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Please spare me your pathetic condescension. Read my posts from the first page of this thread before spouting this idiotic rubbish.

I have expressed my sympathies, sincere prayers and best wishes for the deceased and his family countless times in this very thread, more so than most others including the liberal fascists - not my problem if you are pretending to be illiterate.

I have also condemned Taseer's murder countless times - again, if you don't have the time or the inclination to read, that's your problem, not mine.

As his family and/or party has now moved beyond grieving for their brutally and unjustly murdered father/party leader into shameless and petty politicking, its only fair that they are responded to.
 
saadibaba said:
my father died for pakistan
shehrbanoo taseer

lahore, pakistan

twenty-seven. That’s the number of bullets a police guard fired into my father before surrendering himself with a sinister smile to the policemen around him.
After 86 members of the ahmadi sect, considered blasphemous by fundamentalists, were murdered in attacks on two of their mosques in lahore last may, to the great displeasure of the religious right my father visited the survivors in the hospital.
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94
 
'The killer of my father, Salman Taseer, was showered with rose petals by fanatics'

'The killer of my father, Salman Taseer, was showered with rose petals by fanatics. How could they do this?' Aatish Taseer

I have recently flown home from North America. In airport after international airport, the world's papers carried front page images of my father's assassin.

A 26-year-old boy, with a beard, a forehead calloused from prayer, and the serene expression of a man assured of some higher reward. Last Tuesday, this boy, hardly older than my youngest brother whose 25th birthday it was that day, shot to death my father, the governor of Punjab, in a market in Islamabad.

My father had always taken pleasure in eluding his security, sometimes appearing without any at all in open-air restaurants with his family, but in this last instance it would not have mattered, for the boy who killed him was a member of his security detail.

It appears now that the plan to kill my father had been in his assassin's mind, even revealed to a few confidants, for many days before he carried the act to its fruition. And it is a great source of pain to me, among other things, that my father, always brazen and confident, had spent those last few hours in the company of men who kept a plan to kill him in their breasts.

But perhaps it could have been no other way, for my father would not only have not recognised his assassins, he would not have recognised the country that produced a boy like that. Pakistan was part of his faith, and one of the reasons for the differences that arose between us in the last years of his life–and there were many–was that this faith never allowed him to accept what had become of the country his forefathers had fought for.

And it would have been no less an act of faith for him to defend his country from the men who would see it become a medieval theocracy than it was for his assassin to take his life.

The last time I met or spoke to my father was – it seems hard to believe now – the night three years ago that Benazir Bhutto was killed. We had been estranged for most of my life, and just before he died we were estranged for a second time. I was the son of my Indian mother, with whom my father had a year-long relationship in 1980. In my childhood and adolescence, when he was fighting General Zia's dictatorship alongside Bhutto, and was in and out of jail, I had not known him.

I met him for the first time in my adult life at the age of 21, when I went to Lahore to seek him out. For some time, a promising, but awkward relationship, which included many trips to Lahore and family holidays with his young wife and six other children, developed between us.

The cause for that first estrangement, my father had always explained, was that it would have been impossible for him to be in politics in Pakistan with an Indian wife and a half-Indian son. And, in the end, as much as Pakistan had been the cause of our first estrangement, it was also the cause of our second, which began soon after the London bombings, when my father wrote me an angry letter about a story I had written for Prospect magazine in which I described the British second-generation Pakistani as the genus of Islamic terrorism in Britain.

My father was angry as a Muslim, though he was not a practising man of faith, and as a Pakistani; he accused me of blackening the Taseer name by bringing disrepute to a family of patriots. The letter and the new silence that arose between us prompted a book, Stranger to History, in which I discussed openly many things about my father's religion, Pakistan and my parents' relationship. Its publication freakishly coincided –though he might well have been offended even as a private citizen by what I wrote – with my father's return to politics, after a hiatus of nearly 15 years.

The book made final the distance between us; and a great part of the oblique pain I now feel has to do with mourning a man who was present for most of my life as an absence.

And yet I do mourn him, for whatever the trouble between us, there were things I never doubted about him: his courage, which, truly, was like an incapacity for fear, and his love of Pakistan. I said earlier that Pakistan was part of his faith, but that he himself was not a man of faith. His Islam, though it could inform his political ideas, now giving him a special feeling for the cause of the Palestinians and the Kashmiris, now a pride in the history of Muslims from Andalusia to Mughal India, was not total; it was not a complete vision of a society founded in faith.

He was a man in whom various and competing ideas of sanctity could function. His wish for his country was not that of the totality of Islam, but of a society built on the achievements of men, on science, on rationality, on modernity.

But, to look hard at the face of my father's assassin is to see that in those last moments of his life my father faced the gun of a man whose vision of the world, nihilistic as it is, could admit no other.

And where my father and I would have parted ways in the past was that I believe Pakistan and its founding in faith, that first throb of a nation made for religion by people who thought naively that they would restrict its role exclusively to the country's founding, was responsible for producing my father's killer.

For if it is science and rationality whose fruit you wish to see appear in your country, then it is those things that you must enshrine at its heart; otherwise, for as long as it is faith, the men who say that Pakistan was made for Islam, and that more Islam is the solution, will always have the force of an ugly logic on their side. And better men, men like my father, will be reduced to picking their way around the bearded men, the men with one vision that can admit no other, the men who look to the sanctities of only one Book.

In the days before his death, these same men had issued religious edicts against my father, burned him in effigy and threatened his life. Why? Because he defended the cause of a poor Christian woman who had been accused – and sentenced to die – for blasphemy.

My father, because his country was founded in faith, and blood – a million people had died so that it could be made–could not say that the sentence was wrong; the sentence stood; all he sought for Aasia Bibi was clemency on humanitarian grounds. But it was enough to demand his head.

What my father could never say was what I suspect he really felt: "The very idea of a blasphemy law is primitive; no woman, in any humane society, should die for what she says and thinks."

And when finally my father sought the repeal of the laws that had condemned her, the laws that had become an instrument of oppression in the hands of a majority against its minority, he could not say that the source of the laws, the faith, had no place in a modern society; he had to find a way to make people believe that the religion had been distorted, even though the religion – in the way that only these Books can be – was clear as day about what was meant.

Already, even before his body is cold, those same men of faith in Pakistan have banned good Muslims from mourning my father; clerics refused to perform his last rites; and the armoured vehicle conveying his assassin to the courthouse was mobbed with cheering crowds and showered with rose petals.

I should say too that on Friday every mosque in the country condoned the killer's actions; 2,500 lawyers came forward to take on his defence for free; and the Chief Minister of Punjab, who did not attend the funeral, is yet to offer his condolences in person to my family who sit besieged in their house in Lahore.

And so, though I believe, as deeply as I have ever believed anything, that my father joins that sad procession of martyrs – every day a thinner line – standing between him and his country's descent into fear and nihilism, I also know that unless Pakistan finds a way to turn its back on Islam in the public sphere, the memory of the late governor of Punjab will fade.

And where one day there might have been a street named after him, there will be one named after Malik Mumtaz Qadir, my father's boy-assassin.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...tals-by-fanatics.-How-could-they-do-this.html
 
ShehryarK said:
Please spare me your pathetic condescension. Read my posts from the first page of this thread before spouting this idiotic rubbish.

I have expressed my sympathies, sincere prayers and best wishes for the deceased and his family countless times in this very thread, more so than most others including the liberal fascists - not my problem if you are pretending to be illiterate.

I have also condemned Taseer's murder countless times - again, if you don't have the time or the inclination to read, that's your problem, not mine.

As his family and/or party has now moved beyond grieving for their brutally and unjustly murdered father/party leader into shameless and petty politicking, its only fair that they are responded to.
Click to expand...

This article is just an homage from a grieving daughter to his father. The words you used to attack the article seemed quite insensitive to me. Thanks for the clarification.
 
Yeah I read the Atish Taseer article. I was surprised to know that Atish Taseer is an Indian citizen who lives in New Delhi and Toronto.
 
ShehryarK said:
With respect, its politics. Homage would not touch on half the topics it touches on.
Click to expand...


out of curiosity, which topics in the article do you consider political rather than paying homage to her father? just truly wondering...
 
KB said:
The Pakistani academic, Hasan Askari Rizvi, who writes with a great deal of wisdom on Pakistan, is quoted on the BBC as saying,

"The radical element, which uses violence as a political tool, is limited in numbers...But the mindset that sustains militancy, that dilutes or prevents action against it - I think that has become fairly widespread."

He concludes by saying "If we really want sanity to return to our society, we will have to establish a long-term dialogue through educational institutions, the media and all sections of the society, and facilitate a fusion of ideas.

"If we allow the liberal and the religious streams to continue on separate paths, we risk aggravating social conflict."

There is much food for though here.

I find it distressing that "a great faith tradition" in the words of eminent historian, Ian Talbot, "rich in humanity, culture and a sense of social justice", is used to justify such atrocious acts.
Click to expand...


Couldnt have said better than this,
One of the best write
 
people might bash me for this but this guy had some next level love for prophet. choti si baat thi doast.

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shaykh1985 said:
Thanks for the clarification about the leaders...I dont think I stated that I believed anyone was liberal...in fairness I dont think 'liberal' states are liberal...they appear liberal because of their standing in the world and who their allies are...every system of belief implies a lack of acceptance of another one...

One of the examples I gave was of the IOC which was viewed as illiberal because of their Islamic ideals...that despite being the one group who brought a degree of peace and stability to Somalia...
The so called liberals who were sponsored by the USA did so through invading Somalia and removing a popular government...this state ruled by force but was viewed as a legitimate government because of whos needs they met...

My actual point was that most of these groups are much like the groups they fight against but by virtue of being friends with the West one can be viewed worldwide as a liberal leader...obviously it doesnt mean you are...

Also one of the comparisons I made with Somalia is post US intervention ideology doesnt matter anymore and survival becomes priority...

Islamic groups fight for their survival and so does the ruling elite and like Somalia all of this is done through force....

Liberalism as rule is a myth really and with the US intervention of Afghanistan even getting close to that anything resembling that ideal seems impossible...

In my eyes with the breakdown of state ideology dies completely so that is Islam as an intellectual ideal and the alternative liberal ideals...future isnt bright when survival becomes your reason for functioning...any ideas as to positive steps for change or do you feel its too far gone?...
Click to expand...


I agree with you.

As for your question in the end, at the moment, sadly, I do feel it has gone too far. And won't change until a revolution takes place if this country is to survive.

Sadly, despite my wishing that it were so, I don't think there is any space for an intellectual revolution anymore. We've gone quite a few decades back as a society than we were before. There is no chance of things changing without a bloody revolution in which thousands of innocents will die, sadly.
 
I wish there was discussion worth 8 pages for the killings of innocent people who die everyday :(
 
kkmix said:
I wish there was discussion worth 8 pages for the killings of innocent people who die everyday :(
Click to expand...

i was going to post the same thing but then i thought i might get jumped here.

totally agree. he was bad, 80% people would think he was before his death. everyone has got to go. some set examples for others, and some be examples for bad people. atleast it will decrease these politicians ugly stance. politician who cant recite surah ikhlas dont deserve to be leader of islamic country.

we cant be hypocrites. we got to take a stance, either to go modern way and be like what taseer's life was or just be what our purpose was. muslim country. and to reach that we need to get rid of rotten eggs. and then start from scratch.

i sound like mullah but we have no other choice.....
 
Free Hit said:
i was going to post the same thing but then i thought i might get jumped here.

totally agree. he was bad, 80% people would think he was before his death. everyone has got to go. some set examples for others, and some be examples for bad people. atleast it will decrease these politicians ugly stance. politician who cant recite surah ikhlas dont deserve to be leader of islamic country.

we cant be hypocrites. we got to take a stance, either to go modern way and be like what taseer's life was or just be what our purpose was. muslim country. and to reach that we need to get rid of rotten eggs. and then start from scratch.

i sound like mullah but we have no other choice.....
Click to expand...

Get your facts right please. Jinnah was never creating an islamic country that you propose Do you even know Jinnah. Was taseer bad only because you saw a few pictures of him drinking and his daughter swimming? that makes him bad?

Jinnah named Pakistan 'republic of Pakistan'. He could easily have added 'islamic' next to it but he did not and he would never have. This Pakistan is the last Pakistan he wanted to create

Jinnah ate pork as student, he was an avid drinker, he did almost everything as a law student in England that Quran does not approve of. Does that make him a bad person?

Jinnah created Pakistan so that Muslims don't get discriminated against. He wanted Muslims to live peacefully but for the love of God, please see the difference between this and wanting to create an Islamic country

He created Pakistan to protect the minority (Muslims). Today our own minority live in conditions from hell. We were never going to be an Islamic country under him. Please do some reading
 
Last edited:
atif.raza said:
Get your facts right please. Jinnah was never creating an islamic country that you propose Do you even know Jinnah. Was taseer bad only because you saw a few pictures of him drinking and his daughter swimming? that makes him bad?

Jinnah named Pakistan 'republic of Pakistan'. He could easily have added 'islamic' next to it but he did not and he would never have. This Pakistan is the last Pakistan he wanted to create

Jinnah ate pork as student, he was an avid drinker, he did almost everything as a law student in England that Quran does not approve of. Does that make him a bad person?

Jinnah created Pakistan so that Muslims don't get discriminated. He wanted Muslims to live peacefully but for the love of God, please see the difference between this and wanting to create an Islamic country
Click to expand...

but times have changed...then we needed a seperate muslim country. now people need peace within the community. there are as i said only two ways. one jinahs(if thats what you want me to say) way and one the true islamic way...
 
Maula Jutt said:
It saddens me to see how ignorant majority of Pakistanis are about Jinnah.
Click to expand...

Why won't they be? None of the real Jinnah stuff is taught in the schools? I myself would never have learnt about him if i had not done my own reading from neutral authors on him

I am sure that these Mullahs believe that they are fighting for Jinnah Islamic Pakistan. It is sad that there is just no1 to educate them about the truth
 
I have no love of Western wannabes but seriously, the most most most most most most liberal person doesn't deserve to be murdered and betrayed by the most most most most most most most "religious" person
 
atif.raza said:
Why won't they be? None of the real Jinnah stuff is taught in the schools? I myself would never have learnt about him if i had not done my own reading from neutral authors on him

I am sure that these Mullahs believe that they are fighting for Jinnah Islamic Pakistan. It is sad that there is just no1 to educate them about the truth
Click to expand...

i thought he was pointing at you..........
 
atif.raza said:
Why won't they be? None of the real Jinnah stuff is taught in the schools? I myself would never have learnt about him if i had not done my own reading from neutral authors on him

I am sure that these Mullahs believe that they are fighting for Jinnah Islamic Pakistan. It is sad that there is just no1 to educate them about the truth
Click to expand...
Doubt it, a lot of Mullahs hate Jinnah because he drank--so what, he did a huge service to Muslims and obviously having lived in the West he may have picked up bad habits which is Allah's to judge after Jinnah died.

I am personally not a fan of secularism but their brand of "Islam" is one of the sickest pieces of hijackery
 
1137moiz said:
Doubt it, a lot of Mullahs hate Jinnah because he drank--so what, he did a huge service to Muslims and obviously having lived in the West he may have picked up bad habits which is Allah's to judge after Jinnah died.

I am personally not a fan of secularism but their brand of "Islam" is one of the sickest pieces of hijackery
Click to expand...

and which muslims are you reffering to. here in our masjid where ever i go they call him baba'ai'qaum rahmatulaalai....thats sunni mosques
 
Free Hit said:
but times have changed...then we needed a seperate muslim country. now people need peace within the community. there are as i said only two ways. one jinahs(if thats what you want me to say) way and one the true islamic way...
Click to expand...

There in lies the problem. The true Islamic way and Jinnah way are indeed compatible IMO.

Jinnah may not be the most religious man but he never preached Muslims to inherit his negative traits in Pakistan. We can all agree that we disagree with his lifestyle but we should agree that the Pakistan that he was creating was,

1. to be a tolerant which is indeed the true islamic way
2. to be democracy friendly which is indeed the true islamic way
3. Treat minorities equally which is indeed the true islamic way
4. Don't kill a person simply because you disagree with him which is indeed the true islamic way
5. empower woman which is also indeed the true islamic way

The Islamic system that Qadri and his followers want us to have contains neither of the above characteristics. Instead they are rotting the country and causing its downfall.
 
Free Hit said:
and which muslims are you reffering to. here in our masjid where ever i go they call him baba'ai'qaum rahmatulaalai....thats sunni mosques
Click to expand...
I meant Jamaat Islami type loonies...90 percent of Imams and Masjid-leaders are definitely moderate and decent humans
 
Of course we're living in a Pakistan in which Jinnah himself could have been declared a heretic and murdered.
 
atif.raza said:
There in lies the problem. The true Islamic way and Jinnah way are indeed compatible IMO.

Jinnah may not be the most religious man but he never preached Muslims to inherit his negative traits in Pakistan. We can all agree that we disagree with his lifestyle but we should agree that the Pakistan that he was creating was,

1. to be a tolerant which is indeed the true islamic way
2. to be democracy friendly which is indeed the true islamic way
3. Treat minorities equally which is indeed the true islamic way
4. Don't kill a person simply because you disagree with him which is indeed the true islamic way
5. empower woman which is also indeed the true islamic way

The Islamic system that Qadri and his followers want us to have contains neither of the above characteristics. Instead they are rotting the country and causing its downfall.
Click to expand...

basically who rotting the countries are wahabi and politicians, the qadri's you are reffering to call jinah as quaide azam rahmatulah Alai.....
 
Free Hit said:
i thought he was pointing at you..........
Click to expand...

No, it was a general statement. Though provoked by your comment, nonetheless.

Not that I want to pick on you or anything.

I do, however, think that every Pakistani should learn as much about Jinnah as possible from all sources. It is not impossible anymore because of the Internet. You get access to sources you didn't in the past.

Jinnah was secular himself. His political history with Congress before the demand for Pakistan indicates that clearly. However, the state he wanted to make was Islamic, in that he wanted it to adhere to the spirit of Islam. Spirit of Islam to him meant no discrimination among Pakistan's citizens on any basis. This was the drive behind Pakistan campaign anyway as it was discrimination against Muslims that prompted Jinnah to switch his stance in the first place. This is not the same as a theocracy. He was very clear about this on a number of occasions. Neither is it the same as the alleged Islamic shariah rules that we have today. Had he wanted all this, he would have made sure to ink these rules and laws before his death, even before formation of Pakistan, so that there was no confusion. He could have easily done that. He was a very responsible lawyer, for god's sake.

Yes, Jinnah did make some mistakes during his later Muslim league and Pakistan campaign days. He took some risks and made some political compromises with people (both religious and feudals) who are giving us trouble now. So as we see, some of those risks failed.

However, the reason I encourage people to learn more and more about him from neutral sources is so that they can understand better what he actually wanted. I feel that most Pakistanis do not understand him or his campaign.

Instead, they like to pick and choose his quotes to suit their own arguments.
 
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Maula Jutt said:
Yes, Jinnah did make some mistakes during his later Muslim league and Pakistan campaign days. He took some risks and made some political compromises with people (both religious and feudals) who are giving us trouble now. So as we see, some of those risks failed.

Instead, they like to pick and choose his quotes to suit their own arguments.
Click to expand...



The stakes were so high at that time that the strategies and risks were necessary.
 
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