by SHEHRBANO TASEER
Some 200 lawyers – men of the law – garlanded Qadri and showered him with pink rose petals on both his days in court. The president of the lawyers’ wing of the opposition party Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz was reportedly among them. The smiling assassin has become the poster boy for the unholy ambitions of the self-deluded. Lawyers who fought for an independent judiciary are standing in support of a self-confessed murderer. This is not the Pakistan for which my grandfather, MD Taseer, fought alongside founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
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In Pakistan, the voices calling for reason and tolerance are in danger of being wiped out. The fear is palpable. The militants have issued a warning against further vigils for my father. Yesterday, a rally in support of the blasphemy laws was held in Karachi, at which mullahs incited violence against former information minister Sherry Rehman – my mother’s close friend, and the brave woman I was named after – who tabled a bill in the National Assembly in November proposing blasphemy-law amendments. The politician and former cricketer, Imran Khan, and former prime minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain – both conservatives – have also come out in support of my father’s position: amending the blasphemy laws to prevent their misuse. The ruling party – my father’s party – continues to equivocate.
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(Thanks to Harsh Kapoor of South Asia Citizens Web)