A Courageous Stand

Awais Masood

On 4 Jan­u­ary 2010, a fanat­ic elite force guard betrayed the very duty he was entrust­ed with and shot Gov­er­nor Salmaan Taseer in broad day­light in the country’s cap­i­tal city. As his fel­low guards looked on, the mur­der­er emp­tied twen­ty-six bul­lets into the governor’s back. The mad fren­zy that ensued was a hor­ri­fy­ing indi­ca­tion of how far Pak­istani soci­ety had sunk into moral degra­da­tion – a twist­ed sit­u­a­tion where an assas­sin could be open­ly cel­e­brat­ed and a vic­tim was demo­nized for stand­ing up for the rights of oppressed seg­ments of our soci­ety.

Salmaan Taseer was not the first man to be mur­dered in such a bru­tal fash­ion in Pak­istan; there is a long list of peo­ple who have been vic­tims of the brew­ing intol­er­ance in our soci­ety. In 1997, a Lahore High Court Judge, Jus­tice Arif Iqbal Bhat­ti, was gunned down in his cham­bers for acquit­ting two blas­phe­my-accused Chris­tians two years pri­or. Extra-judi­cial lynch­ing of ordi­nary cit­i­zens and the mis­use of laws to set­tle per­son­al scores have become a fre­quent occur­rence. Weeks after Taseer fell, anoth­er high-rank­ing offi­cial, Fed­er­al Min­is­ter for Minori­ties Affairs Shah­baz Bhat­ti, was assas­si­nat­ed in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing. No jus­tice has been served in either case, and it seems no lessons have been learned.

What’s tru­ly astound­ing is that Salmaan Taseer was mur­dered for a crime he did not com­mit; he nev­er endorsed blas­phe­mous speech, but rather spoke out against the mis­use of man-made laws which led to the per­se­cu­tion of mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties in our soci­ety. The ter­ri­ble inci­dent and the sub­se­quent praise show­ered on the mur­der­er have been a shock­ing reminder to us all; the dan­gers of dis­tort­ing reli­gion and using indis­crim­i­nate vio­lence can no longer be swept under the car­pet.

Taseer stands out as a sym­bol of courage and truth in the face of bul­ly­ing. His was a stand for human dig­ni­ty, equal­i­ty and free­dom. He point­ed out the ills of our soci­ety that are lead­ing us towards cer­tain decline. He tried to counter the cur­rents of intol­er­ance and irra­tional­i­ty and him­self became a vic­tim of what he was fight­ing against.

Although Taseer has been laid to rest, the idea for which he stood lives on: that all human beings are equal and must be treat­ed as such. There is no rea­son for us to lose hope and let the oppressed reli­gious and eth­nic minori­ties of this land suf­fer. Emu­lat­ing his exam­ple and stand­ing for the rights of oth­ers is the only way that we can right­ful­ly pay trib­ute to his courage and sac­ri­fice. Though it may seem that the forces of tol­er­ance and open­ness were dealt a great blow with his death, the bat­tle for a bet­ter Pak­istan must go on.