Christmas Every Day

One of the worst mistakes made by the British government was to allow the partition of their Empire of India in 1947 and the establishment of a religiously-centred Pakistan and a secular Hindu-majority India. This partition was far-too hasty — the result of violence by pro-independence fighters and the new Labour administration’s dislike of imperialism — and ill-conceived. For that, one must also blame the short-sightedness of Mahatma Gandhi and the cleverness of Muslim League leader Muhammed Ali Jinnah. Gandhi and his Congress Party had stupidly opposed Indian cooperation in World War II and the struggle against the Japanese takeover of Asia, while Jinnah and the Muslim League supported the war effort. When the time came for British withdrawal, Jinnah was owed favours and Gandhi was most definitely not.

The result of partition was immediate sectarian violence and a transfer of populations that took as many as a million lives. In the seventy-plus years since, secular India has (largely) prospered, while Pakistan, which enshrined sharia in its constitution, is a corrupt failed state, prone to coups and assassinations, and a culture that supports acts of terror against non-Muslims. Which brings us to February 29, 2016, and the execution of Mumtaz Qadri.

Mr Qadri was a member of an elite police squad and a bodyguard of the governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer. Taseer had bravely spoken out against Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which called for the death penalty for anyone speaking ill of the Islamic prophet Muhammed, and had urged a pardon for a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, who had been condemned to hang for that crime. This opinion offended Mr Qadri, who registered his disapproval on January 4, 2011 by shooting Mr Taseer 27 times with an assault rifle.

This assassination pretty much ended any thoughts that a liberal opinion might be tolerated in Pakistan, especially as Clement Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minority Affairs minister and the only Christian in the Pakistani cabinet, was also murdered shortly thereafter for expressing similar support for Ms Bibi. Prominent Muslim clerics refused to conduct Taseer’s funeral, and Islamic groups warned that anyone who expressed grief over the assassination could also be murdered. “No Muslim should attend the funeral or even try to pray for Salman Taseer or even express any kind of regret or sympathy over the incident,” said the Jamaat-e-Ahl-e-Sunnat party who also decreed that anyone who expressed sympathy over the death of a blasphemer was also committing blasphemy

Mumtaz Qadir was showered with rose petals on the way to his trial; 300 lawyers offered to defend him pro bono. Lawyers in the capital city went on strike to protest his conviction (which was supposedly held on February 29 to prevent his death from being celebrated as an anniversary) and 100,000 mourners attended his funeral. His grave is now a pilgrimage site.

Asia Bibi was freed by the Supreme Court after world-wide protests and lives incognito in Canada, still under threat of a bounty placed on her head by a Pakistani Muslim cleric.