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Salmaan Taseer is a victim of Pakistan's fatal flaw
The murder of Salmaan Taseer is the culmination of Pakistan's historic move towards religious intolerance and Islamisation
Pakistani police guards carry the coffin of Salmaan Taseer, the Punjab governor, during his funeral procession in Lahore. Photograph: Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images
Pakistan's founders explained their hasty creation as the promised land where no Muslim would be killed for being Muslim. Today, it is a land where Muslims are killed for not being Muslim enough. Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Pakistan's largest province, Punjab, was assassinated because he had the temerity to assail the country's anti-blasphemy laws when he responded to the plight of Aasia Bibi a 45-year-old Christian woman awaiting execution for the capital crime, under Pakistan's penal code, of blasphemy against Islam.
Who bears the responsibility for Taseer's death? To Pakistan's liberals, the principal cause of religious extremism in their country begins and ends with one person: General Zia-ul-Haq, an austere bigot who governed the country from 1976 until his death in 1988. Apportioning the blame so disproportionately exonerates his predecessors, erases the deeper history of theocratic idealism that underpins the very idea of Pakistan, and promotes, to the present generation, the erroneous idea that, prior to Zia, Pakistan accommodated pluralism.
Liaquat Ali Khan, Jinnah's erstwhile deputy and Pakistan's first prime minister, formally initiated the Islamisation of Pakistan in 1949. The objectives resolution he introduced set out the core constitutional principles by which the new country would be governed. Among other things, it proclaimed that Allah, who held sovereignty "over the entire universe", had "delegated it to Pakistan", and it called for the creation of conditions "wherein the Muslims shall be enabled to order their lives in the individual and collective spheres in accordance with the teachings and requirements of Islam as set out in the Holy Qur'an and the Sunnah".
This immediately disenfranchised non-Muslims, and empowered mullahs and extremists. Senior government officials were soon calling for the adoption of Arabic as the national language and mooting the prospect of "Islamistan", a global confederation of Islamic states. This pan-Islamic fervour part of Pakistan's attempts to anchor its invented identity was not shared by other Muslim nations which, for all their inadequacies, had more definite pasts and less fragile presents than the self-appointed Land of the Pure. But there were consequences.
By the time Ayub Khan launched the first military coup in 1958, 11-year-old Pakistan had been ruled by seven prime ministers. His finely clipped moustache and fondness for scotch whiskey led outsiders to view him as a great moderniser. Indeed, Ayub's first major act as president was to commission the construction of a new capital city. A Greek firm of architects was tasked with the job. On 24 February 1960, Ayub gave the city its name: Islamabad, the City of Islam. Fittingly, while the parliament and the supreme court built by the Greeks are frequently forced into abeyance, the one building that is always open for business in today's Islamabad is a mosque named after a Saudi despot who funded it.
A new constitution was promulgated in 1962. Pakistan's official name was changed to Republic of Pakistan, dropping the "Islamic" that the 1956 constitution had introduced. But this was superficial at best. The constitution created a greater role for religion and religious policing. It established an Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology to bring Pakistanis "into conformity with the teachings and requirements of Islam". It called for the creation of an Islamic Research Institute to "assist in the reconstruction of Muslim society on a truly Islamic basis". The first amendment to the constitution restored the country's old name: the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
Pakistan's pluralistic heritage was subsequently erased in order to create a malleable monolith. Education was the principal target the study of Islamiyat was promoted at universities; a new discipline called Pakistan studies, locating the country's origins in the history of Islam, was created; and the army, particularly Ayub, was portrayed as its saviour. India, meanwhile, was demonised as a "Hindu" state.
Ayub launched a war against India in 1965. At the battle of Badr in the 7th century, the prophet's tiny band of Muslim soldiers claimed to have vanquished the Quraysh with the help of white-turbaned angels sent by Gabriel. Ayub's propaganda machinery borrowed directly from that legend, reaffirming Pakistan's position as the defender of Islam. Stories about Pakistan's forces being assisted by green-robed angels who deflected Indian bombs with a wave of their hand were circulating, as were legends about Pakistani soldiers shooting down Indian aircraft with Enfield rifles. Pakistanis weren't just being invited to celebrate the valour of their soldiers they were being told that their side had received celestial sanction.
Salmaan Taseer's security guard seemingly felt blessed by such a divinity when he pulled the trigger on the man he was commissioned to defend. To all those in Pakistan's armed forces who sympathise with Taseer's killer, this act may be a logical culmination of the journey that began in 1947. The suppression of dissenting or minority expression in a country that claims to symbolise the liberation of an allegedly oppressed people exposes Pakistan's fatal flaw: it remains, to use Salman Rushdie's words, an "insufficiently imagined" idea.
