There is a chance to put the genie back into the bottle now
The country is facing lawlessness because successive governments have allowed themselves to be intimidated by the extremists. Early this year the Pew Research Centre published two well researched indices, based on statistics from the years 2007-2012, showing a rise in religion related intolerance in Pakistan. It concluded that “Pakistan had the highest level of social hostilities involving religion”. The intolerance expresses itself in a number of ways, including the society’s attitude towards mentally disturbed. In 2011, 45 students who were kept chained were recovered by Karachi police from a seminary in Sohrab Goth. According to police they were kept in the basement and subjected to torture by the administration of the seminary. Two years back, 2,000 persons were booked in Channigoth in Bahawalpur for burning alive a mentally ill and homeless ‘malang’ inside a police station for yet to be proved charge of blasphemy.
Extremism is not confined to the socially backward sections of society alone. In 2002, a former lawmaker and cleric from Kohistan district termed formal education for women un-Islamic and asked parents to withdraw their daughters from school, or else they would be ‘doomed’. The problem is not specific to seminaries alone. The books taught in mainstream educational institutions often contain material which inculcates extremist tendencies. Last year, a PTI lawmakers from KP demanded in the National Assembly, to the horror of some of his party men, that Salmaan Taseer’s assassin should be freed honourably. The bug has bitten some of the members of the legal community also who have been nurtured in mainstream schools.
Recently UN Special Rapporteur Gabriela Knaul said that Pakistani lawyers who represent clients accused of blasphemy are often targeted and that judges feel they must decide against those defendants even when the evidence does not support a conviction What happened in Multan is yet another corroboration of the observation. On Wednesday, Supreme Court advocate and prominent human rights activist Rashid Rehman Khan was gunned down. He was defending a university lecturer accused of blasphemy and had already complained that he had been receiving threats on his life. The government has to realise that the spread of extremism in society threatens to tear the fabric of society apart. Allowed to go unchecked by spineless administrations, it is breeding like a virus. About 50,000 people both civilians and army men have been killed by the terrorist since 9/11. Terrorist networks get a steady supply of recruits from extremist circles that continue to flourish. The government has allowed extremism to flourish for far too long. It is time it acts to stem the tide.
