Jhon Smith
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Pakistan and blasphemy
Worryingly, a liberal’s killer is honoured in Pakistan
Mar 2nd 2016, 9:43 BY J.B. AND ERASMUS | RAWALPINDI
THESE are dark times for anybody who cares about religious freedom, and the fate of minority faiths, in Pakistan. It is exactly five years since Shahbaz Bhatti, the minorities minister who was the only Christian in the government and an opponent of the country’s blasphemy law, was assassinated by the Pakistani Taliban. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom marked the anniversary by urging the abolition of that law. But far from honouring the slain minister’s memory, there seem to be ever more Pakistanis who agree that death is an appropriate fate not only for blasphemers but for those who dare to question the rightness of such a penalty.
One such questioner was Salman Taseer, a liberal-minded governor of Punjab province; in January 2011 he was gunned down by a self-appointed scourge of liberalism: his own bodyguard. That assassin, Mumtaz Qadri, was hanged this week in a Rawalpindi prison, and up to 100,000 people attended his funeral or staged protests elsewhere in Pakistan. They saw Qadri as a lone, heroic practitioner of divine justice, not a murderer.
Taseer’s crime in the eyes of Qadri and his supporters was his support for Asia Bibi, a poor Christian woman who is on death row after being accused of blasphemy by neighbours in a petty quarrel. Taseer had also described the blasphemy ban as a “black law”. So powerful was this week’s groundswell of support for Qadri that the government stopped broadcasters carrying news of the funeral and no front-rank politician dared to comment publicly. In an atmosphere rife with conspiracy theory, Qadri’s supporters claimed he was hanged on February 29th, a date which comes round every four years, in order to deny him an anniversary.
What is the origin of Pakistan’s fury against religious offence, real or imagined? Liberal Pakistanis like to stress that the country was not always so prickly about faith. Some blame the change of mood on Zia ul Haq, the Islamist dictator and cold-war ally of the West who seized power in 1977 and was killed in 1988. Others recall that laws banning blasphemy go right back to the British Raj.
It is certainly true that General Zia built a network of religious schools that prepared people to fight the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, and generally fanned the flames of religous zeal. The old British bans on blasphemy, later inherited by independent Pakistan, were also introduced in a pragmatic spirit, designed to keep order. Under General Zia, things got much harsher; disrespecting the Koran or Islam’s prophet could incur life imprisonment or, in the latter case, death. Then in 1991 a federal religious court ruled that death was the only appropriate punishment for blasphemy.
The number of blasphemy cases began soaring in the 1980s; between 1929 and 1982 there had been only nine, according to the Jinnah Institute, a think-tank.
But the idea of honouring individuals who take it upon themselves to liquidate blasphemers, or those who are soft on blasphemy, is nothing new. In 1929, a young carpenter’s apprenticewas executed for killing a publisher in Lahore who had circulated a controversial work on Muhammad. Huge crowds attended the funeral; the atmosphere must have been very similar to this week’s outpouring of grief, anger and vindictiveness.
Here’s another confusing part of the story. The two best known streams of South Asian Islam, whether in Pakistan or Britain, are the puritanical Deobandis and the Barelvis, whose more elaborate forms of worship, involving saints and shrines, are sometimes called popular Sufism. The madrassas founded by General Zia follow the Deobandi path. In Britain, it is the Deobandis who are often perceived as hard-liners and advocates of self-segregation, while the Barelvis are seen as more moderate and amenable. The Taliban and several terrorist groups are offshoots of the Deobandi movement, although there are other ultra-pious Deobandis who are peaceful.
But the adulation of the two killers (Ilm-Deen in 1929 and Qadri in 2016) is a Barelvi phenomenon. Barelvis have never ceased to honour the grave of Ilm-Deen and they attended this week’s funeral in huge numbers. By contrast one of Pakistan’s most senior Deobandi clerics defended the execution, saying nobody was above the law.
Unfortunately, the roots of religious rage in Pakistan can’t be reduced to one particular school of Islam, one political leader, or one period of history. If only things were that simple.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/eras...worryinglyaliberalskillerishonouredinpakistan
Liberal time,
There was Modern Pak before Bhutto and Zia era, the best Pak when it was making enamours progress. In these time Pak has best Mathematicians and physicist of world and now in 2016 she don't have even few Asian level mathematicians.
The Pakistani society maintained a liberal aura.
Night-clubs, bars, horse racing, and cinemas continued to thrive and mushroom, and religiosity largely remained a private matter, even though the government and state of Pakistan started using religious symbolism more often than before — especially as a way to drown out an emerging post-1971 notion (among some sections) suggesting that Jinnah’s ‘Two Nation Theory’ that had given birth to Pakistan had collapsed after the separation of East Pakistan.
A 1973 press ad (in DAWN newspaper) of one of Karachi’s many famous nightclubs of the 1970s, The Oasis.
Pakistan’s tourism industry also witnessed an unprecedented boom during the Bhutto era, and the country’s Urdu film scene reached a commercial peak, a feat it would struggle to repeat in the future.
By now, flamboyant fashions that had been rapidly taking shape in the West — ‘bellbottoms,’ colorful shirts, long hair, heavy neck chains, platform shoes — arrived in full force and were enthusiastically embraced by urban middle-class youth.
Even though Western fashion and countercultural antics became all the rage among the urban young men and women, the youth’s desire to have a spiritual and cultural connect with the masses (discovered in the late 1960s) through the shrine culture too remained afoot.
A 1972 cover of Pakistan’s leading monthly magazine, The Herald.
A bus for tourists in Peshawar (1973).
Along with beer-serving roadside cafes in Karachi and Lahore, shrines too became a favorite haunt for students, and well known theatre artistes and painters.
For the Pakistan film industry, the culturally radiant times of the Bhutto regime produced a commercial bonanza as the industry managed to generate dozens of ‘super hits’ between 1970 and 1977.
To accommodate the large number of films being produced (mainly in Lahore), the number of cinemas also increased across the country, with the largest one (and the only cinema in Pakistan at the time to have a 70mm screen), appearing in 1976 in Karachi and appropriately called Prince Cinema.
A full house at Karachi’s Nishat Cinema (1973).
Army Gen Zia Ul Haq is responsible for the most of the chaos in Pakistan. He made Taliban , to serve US interests in Afghanistan, he made MQM , the terrorist organisation being used by India's RAW , he made a Political party, the most corrupt one ( naming the leader of which can land me in jail) . When Pakistan was made in 1947 , it had no religious intolerance, it had no islamists , it had no terrorist organisations unless and until Gen Zia Ul Haq came into power.
NAwaz Sharif govt are in Punjab since 8 years, If they really like Pak , they muct impart masses with better education and replace the centuries old Madrass system with 20th century schools. Wide spread poverty are one cause for religious extremism in Pak.
http://www.dawn.com/news/1223761
@WAJsal @Oscar @The Eagle @Zibago @django @The Sandman @That Guy @Moonlight @somebozo @Mr.Meap @Spring Onion @Arsalan @Path-Finder @dsr478 @Pakistani Exile @HttpError
@maximuswarrior @Tipu7 @Śakra @Nilgiri @PaklovesTurkiye @Areesh @Genghis khan1 @Doordie
Worryingly, a liberal’s killer is honoured in Pakistan
Mar 2nd 2016, 9:43 BY J.B. AND ERASMUS | RAWALPINDI
THESE are dark times for anybody who cares about religious freedom, and the fate of minority faiths, in Pakistan. It is exactly five years since Shahbaz Bhatti, the minorities minister who was the only Christian in the government and an opponent of the country’s blasphemy law, was assassinated by the Pakistani Taliban. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom marked the anniversary by urging the abolition of that law. But far from honouring the slain minister’s memory, there seem to be ever more Pakistanis who agree that death is an appropriate fate not only for blasphemers but for those who dare to question the rightness of such a penalty.
One such questioner was Salman Taseer, a liberal-minded governor of Punjab province; in January 2011 he was gunned down by a self-appointed scourge of liberalism: his own bodyguard. That assassin, Mumtaz Qadri, was hanged this week in a Rawalpindi prison, and up to 100,000 people attended his funeral or staged protests elsewhere in Pakistan. They saw Qadri as a lone, heroic practitioner of divine justice, not a murderer.
Taseer’s crime in the eyes of Qadri and his supporters was his support for Asia Bibi, a poor Christian woman who is on death row after being accused of blasphemy by neighbours in a petty quarrel. Taseer had also described the blasphemy ban as a “black law”. So powerful was this week’s groundswell of support for Qadri that the government stopped broadcasters carrying news of the funeral and no front-rank politician dared to comment publicly. In an atmosphere rife with conspiracy theory, Qadri’s supporters claimed he was hanged on February 29th, a date which comes round every four years, in order to deny him an anniversary.
What is the origin of Pakistan’s fury against religious offence, real or imagined? Liberal Pakistanis like to stress that the country was not always so prickly about faith. Some blame the change of mood on Zia ul Haq, the Islamist dictator and cold-war ally of the West who seized power in 1977 and was killed in 1988. Others recall that laws banning blasphemy go right back to the British Raj.
It is certainly true that General Zia built a network of religious schools that prepared people to fight the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, and generally fanned the flames of religous zeal. The old British bans on blasphemy, later inherited by independent Pakistan, were also introduced in a pragmatic spirit, designed to keep order. Under General Zia, things got much harsher; disrespecting the Koran or Islam’s prophet could incur life imprisonment or, in the latter case, death. Then in 1991 a federal religious court ruled that death was the only appropriate punishment for blasphemy.
The number of blasphemy cases began soaring in the 1980s; between 1929 and 1982 there had been only nine, according to the Jinnah Institute, a think-tank.
But the idea of honouring individuals who take it upon themselves to liquidate blasphemers, or those who are soft on blasphemy, is nothing new. In 1929, a young carpenter’s apprenticewas executed for killing a publisher in Lahore who had circulated a controversial work on Muhammad. Huge crowds attended the funeral; the atmosphere must have been very similar to this week’s outpouring of grief, anger and vindictiveness.
Here’s another confusing part of the story. The two best known streams of South Asian Islam, whether in Pakistan or Britain, are the puritanical Deobandis and the Barelvis, whose more elaborate forms of worship, involving saints and shrines, are sometimes called popular Sufism. The madrassas founded by General Zia follow the Deobandi path. In Britain, it is the Deobandis who are often perceived as hard-liners and advocates of self-segregation, while the Barelvis are seen as more moderate and amenable. The Taliban and several terrorist groups are offshoots of the Deobandi movement, although there are other ultra-pious Deobandis who are peaceful.
But the adulation of the two killers (Ilm-Deen in 1929 and Qadri in 2016) is a Barelvi phenomenon. Barelvis have never ceased to honour the grave of Ilm-Deen and they attended this week’s funeral in huge numbers. By contrast one of Pakistan’s most senior Deobandi clerics defended the execution, saying nobody was above the law.
Unfortunately, the roots of religious rage in Pakistan can’t be reduced to one particular school of Islam, one political leader, or one period of history. If only things were that simple.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/eras...worryinglyaliberalskillerishonouredinpakistan
Liberal time,
There was Modern Pak before Bhutto and Zia era, the best Pak when it was making enamours progress. In these time Pak has best Mathematicians and physicist of world and now in 2016 she don't have even few Asian level mathematicians.
The Pakistani society maintained a liberal aura.
Night-clubs, bars, horse racing, and cinemas continued to thrive and mushroom, and religiosity largely remained a private matter, even though the government and state of Pakistan started using religious symbolism more often than before — especially as a way to drown out an emerging post-1971 notion (among some sections) suggesting that Jinnah’s ‘Two Nation Theory’ that had given birth to Pakistan had collapsed after the separation of East Pakistan.
Pakistan’s tourism industry also witnessed an unprecedented boom during the Bhutto era, and the country’s Urdu film scene reached a commercial peak, a feat it would struggle to repeat in the future.
By now, flamboyant fashions that had been rapidly taking shape in the West — ‘bellbottoms,’ colorful shirts, long hair, heavy neck chains, platform shoes — arrived in full force and were enthusiastically embraced by urban middle-class youth.
Even though Western fashion and countercultural antics became all the rage among the urban young men and women, the youth’s desire to have a spiritual and cultural connect with the masses (discovered in the late 1960s) through the shrine culture too remained afoot.
Along with beer-serving roadside cafes in Karachi and Lahore, shrines too became a favorite haunt for students, and well known theatre artistes and painters.
For the Pakistan film industry, the culturally radiant times of the Bhutto regime produced a commercial bonanza as the industry managed to generate dozens of ‘super hits’ between 1970 and 1977.
To accommodate the large number of films being produced (mainly in Lahore), the number of cinemas also increased across the country, with the largest one (and the only cinema in Pakistan at the time to have a 70mm screen), appearing in 1976 in Karachi and appropriately called Prince Cinema.
Army Gen Zia Ul Haq is responsible for the most of the chaos in Pakistan. He made Taliban , to serve US interests in Afghanistan, he made MQM , the terrorist organisation being used by India's RAW , he made a Political party, the most corrupt one ( naming the leader of which can land me in jail) . When Pakistan was made in 1947 , it had no religious intolerance, it had no islamists , it had no terrorist organisations unless and until Gen Zia Ul Haq came into power.
NAwaz Sharif govt are in Punjab since 8 years, If they really like Pak , they muct impart masses with better education and replace the centuries old Madrass system with 20th century schools. Wide spread poverty are one cause for religious extremism in Pak.
http://www.dawn.com/news/1223761
@WAJsal @Oscar @The Eagle @Zibago @django @The Sandman @That Guy @Moonlight @somebozo @Mr.Meap @Spring Onion @Arsalan @Path-Finder @dsr478 @Pakistani Exile @HttpError
@maximuswarrior @Tipu7 @Śakra @Nilgiri @PaklovesTurkiye @Areesh @Genghis khan1 @Doordie
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