Huge pressure 2 cow down
The murder of Salman Taseer just fills me with rage and disgust. I don’t have anything more intelligent to say about it.
Just a month ago we were reading about him:
Hundreds of Islamist hardliners took to the streets of Pakistan’s main cities yesterday in support of the country’s prejudicial blasphemy laws and against two leading politicians they have threatened for speaking out against the persecution of a Christian woman. At rallies in Karachi, Lahore and other cities, the crowds of protestors warned the political class against any attempt to amend or repeal the laws. They also chanted slogans denouncing Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab, and Sherry Rehman, a liberal parliamentarian.
Mr Taseer and Ms Rehman were singled out for speaking out against the treatment of Aasia Bibi…
But Mr Taseer refused to give in, as I noted at the time:
Mr Taseer responded with characteristic insouciance. “It doesn’t bother me,” he said. “Who the hell are these illiterare maulvis to decide to whether i’m a Muslim or not?” Earlier, he tweeted: “Tomorrow mullahs r demonstrating against me…Thousands of beards screaming 4 my head.What a great feeling!”
Brave and funny, and the malevolent reeking bastards who hated him for saying a woman shouldn’t be killed for belonging to an outsider religion have shut him up. It makes me sick.
Salman Rushdie told me on Facebook that Taseer’s last Twitter post 4 days ago said
“I was under huge pressure 2 cow down b4 rightist pressure on blasphemy. Refused. Even if I’m the last man standing.”
Which makes me want to scream.
Awful, awful news. How can people be expected to stand up for the beliefs while bullets fly above them? It’s just rank intimidation and the worst thing is that they’d be happy to admit it.
The internal debate raging on the secularist side: Should we forthrightly say what we think, or should we tiptoe around being extra-polite so as not to offend anybody?
The internal debate raging on the theocrat side: Should we forthrightly say what we think, or should we fucking shoot you in the head?
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I’ve tried but I don’t think it’s possible for me to add anything to what he has already said and done. It’s a true loss to the world.
Religion poisons everything. No, we should not continue trying to be polite in the face of this insanity. It not only makes me sick, it makes me very angry. The trouble with this anger is that there’s no way to express it in such a way as to do some good. I am usually very polite, I’m afraid. I still think we need people like PZ who can tell it like it is without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. Idiots need to be called idiots, even if it turns them off. Dolts should be called dolts, and wankers wankers, so long as we say clearly why they deserve this opprobrium. What is the problem with this? Ridicule is central to the defeat of religion. It may turn some people against us, but it will surely, in the end, help people to see religion as it is, without its clothes on, so zu sagen. What a great pity, for Mr. Taseer was a bright light in a dark land.
Same here. Boiling with anger and grief mixed up together. (Grief sounds a bit odd or pretentious I suppose – it’s not as if I knew him. But I admired him and what he was doing and his sense of humor. Plus there’s Pakistan.)
Revolting – the smug look on the murderer’s face and his self-congratulatory, arrogant, pietistic comment “this is the punishment for a blasphemer” –
I remember reading the 4 December Independent piece, and being heartened by Salmaan Taseer’s defiance. I thought it seemed reckless, and suspect he knew that it was. I will not shy from expressing gratitude for his sacrifice.
Someone needs to ask Tony Blair exactly how we take these people on religiously.
I feel the same mixture of emotions. It feels like something else died with Salman Taseer. I remember the piece about his defiance against the beards, and thinking at the time that there was a bit of hubris and naivety there, a kind of death wish. It feels like that Pakistan has gone a notch down toward theocracy. It also feels like secularism is destined to fail in Muslim countries, because the violence and death is too strong a force, selecting progress out of the equation.
That’s my feelings. And where are the moderates? Where are the protests apart from a few dozen? Why are there no world leaders being equally defiant and lets face it…where is the moral honesty?
I didn’t know Mr. Taseer and only learned of his existence just a few weeks ago. Maybe that’s why I feel so angry right now. (That and the murderer’s smugness.) Here was someone who was arguing for at least some of the things we all know Muslim countries need. He had attained a position of some power and had been pushing his case. And just as I learned of a potential ally he was gunned down by some fuck so convinced of his righteousness he’s blind to the fate he’s pushed his nation towards.
I was a bit sceptical when I read abour Salman Taseer initially. My initial thought was how did anyone that secular/rational get to be governor of punjab in the first place, given the context of the collective religious madness that’s gripped that country? But I was heartened that there was a voice of power that was ready to stand against the tide of mindnumbing stupidity and hatred.
Here’s to Salman Taseer’s courage. It was courage on a level few of us can achieve, a courage that can easily be mistaken for foolhardiness, because pakistan has become the sort of society where the danger comes not only from the stranger with the suicide belt but from those in one’s inner circle.
I doubt the majority of Pakistanis realise what a loss their country has just suffered.
One can only hope this will bring more moderate Muslim voices to the forefront in Pakistan, rather than silence them in fear.
This man makes me proud to be a human. I feel ennobled by his courage, somehow, perhaps because I doubt I could match it. That people rioted in anger at his assassination is encouraging, though it would have been better if their numbers were larger.
The moderate muslim voices in Pakistan are not going to win this battle; they are outgunned on every front. The elite english speaking, internet savvy Pakistanis have been vocal in expressing support for the murder of Salman Taseer. The mainstream urdu press is taking savage pleasure in the killing. The Jang newspaper had a front page story declaring that there should be no funeral for Taseem and no condemnation for his murder. Over 500 of those bloodsucking bastards who call themselves muslim clerics have announced a fatwa that no one should say funeral prayers for taseem or send condolences to his family- apparently it is islamic’ to glory in murder and mayhem and ‘unislamic’ to express simple human sentiments to the bereaved.
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_620829.html
Really sorry for mis-spelling Mr Taseer’s name. I know a couple of Taseems and am more used to typing that name.
Some years ago I came to the opinion that Islam is a form of collective insanity.
This event does nothing to shake my faith. In the belief that I was right.
Pakistan Muslim scholars praise killer of governor
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_PAKISTAN?SITE=VASTR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
The following wikileak cable (http://213.251.145.96/cable/2009/01/09LONDON27.html) gives some interesting and disturbing information about muslim populations and attitudes in the UK:
and
Which can be interpreted to mean that maybe about half of muslims don’t take their religion too seriously, however the pressure to call yourself muslim is obvious, if violence against apostasy is a constant threat.
Now the disturbing stuff:
And
Yes only six percent, only, for christ’s sake. That’s potentially 132,000 UK muslims who think their fellow ex-muslims should be killed for apostasy.
Nevermind about extremists in Pakistan, we have a major problem in the UK and other countries with insane immigration policies and lack of integration.
sort of re-orders priorities compared to squabbling with Mooney….
The BBC published some of the press reactions in Pakistan.
From Ummat, a Karachi Urdu daily –
I have a feeling that, at the most basic level, he was killed because he would not fear them.
A co-worker of mine is visiting family in Karachi as we speak. He’s due back next week. I wonder what tales he will have?
I assume that his bodyguards, seeings he was the govenor of Punjab Province, would have been hand-picked and properly vetted. Yet, one of his bodyguards turned out to be his killer.
This has terrifying implications.
Are there people with similar mentalities to Taseer’s murderer gurarding Pakistan’s nuclear stockpiles, people who’d do just about anything for the cause of Islam?
As in giving jihadists unfettered access to some of them?
I’ve a suspicion that some warheads have already been spirited out of the country.
Pakistan is a clearing house for jihadists all across the globe.
That is why this is no Lee Harvey Oswald, or unabomber, or Eric Rudolph. It’s much more serious than that. Can you imagine a Christian secret service agent (even if he happens to be a fundamentalist) killing the president over his defense of abortion?
[…] claim especially relevant now in places where Islam is hegemonic. Considering the brutal murder of Salmaan Taseer last week, such voices should be heeded far and […]