He has been a posterboy for the conservative right. And we mean that literally. When he was spiritedly following up on the case of online blasphemy, going to the extent of saying that he would call the PM to court if he had to, his religious-minded supporters put up posters with his photos in Islamabad. He asked for those to be taken down.
But he also attracted the ire of some within the conservatives when, as member of a two-member Islamabad High Court bench hearing Mumtaz Qadri’s appeal, he not only upheld the death sentence but also asked the defence counsel questions about how an individual could decide on his own about who is a blasphemer. And whether one runs the risk of being a blasphemer if one doesn’t wear a green turban.
He swung back to the other end when he, in a bizarre decision, banned Valentine’s Day celebrations in Islamabad.
But then he was back again, riling up the conservatives, asking the government to take out the protesters at Faizabad. It was in this case that Siddiqui caused his biggest stir of the year, when he openly questioned the military’s role in the resolution of the said sit-in.
“Who is the army to adopt a mediator’s role?” inquired the judge. “Where does the law assign this role to a major general?”
Siddiqui also questioned the military’s apparent reluctance to follow government orders of clearing the sit-in, referring to the tweet by the DG ISPR, which said that the COAS had asked “both sides” to exercise restraint. Justice Siddiqui even went to the extent of remarking that this was proof of “the military’s involvement.”
In the US, Supreme Court judges are usually slotted as “mostly conservative” and “mostly liberal”, euphemisms for “appointed by a Republican president” and “appointed by a Democrat president” respectively. It is the “swing” judges where most of the public interest lies.
In Pakistan, however, most judges fall, broadly speaking, in the (socially) conservative category. Some within the liberals. The interesting ones are the rare few that take on the military.
Barring a most stark personally ideological realignment, we can expect the man on this list next year.
