The assassination of Pakistan's Minister for Minority Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti for his criticism of the Islamic Republic's harsh and inhuman blasphemy law is no doubt a heinous crime but let us not feign surprise that such a terrible thing has happened in that country once again. Less than two months after the powerful Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, was gunned down for exactly the same reason, the murder of Shahbaz Bhatti, the only Christian Minister in the Pakistani Cabinet, was really predictable — "I was told by the religious extremists… you will be killed," he had said during an interview. Consequently, he had been accorded extra security but Shahbaz Bhatti had little faith even in his guards. Little wonder that when Taliban jihadis attacked his vehicle on Wednesday morning, the Minister had no security detail. Shahbaz Bhatti was declared dead at a local hospital where the customary autopsy revealed that the terrorists, all of them Pakistanis, had pumped at least 35 bullets into his face, chest and stomach. Such are the wages of the Pakistani state's collective sin. A country founded on the basis of religion is bound to degenerate into a theocracy and descend into murderous chaos. Mohammed Ali Jinnah may have grandly declared in Pakistan's Constituent Assembly that "You may belong to any religion… that has nothing to do with the business of the state" but there is little evidence to suggest that either he or those who took over from him took any of these words to heart. We also should not be distracted by what Jinnah promised and his successors practised while looking for Pakistan's 'lost secular ideals' for they never existed. Pakistan has transmogrified, as it was destined to, into a haven for terrorists of varying shades of Islamism, all of them raring to wage jihad both within and outside the country that was supposed to provide shelter and succour to the sub-continent's Muslims. Pakistan's political and military elite bred and reared a monster to implement Islamabad's policy of promoting cross-border terrorism; that monster has now turned on its master. It's a beast which can never be appeased, but this simple message continues to be lost on both the Generals of Rawalpindi and the politicians of Islamabad.
It's futile to debate and deliberate on Pakistan's future. At the moment, it's a country in free fall, a state which is collapsing with every passing day. Yet, and tragically so for Pakistanis, their rulers, including the men in khaki who persist with their dollar-fetching fiction that Pakistan faces its real threat from India and not from jihadis within, are seemingly callous and couldn't care less about the state of affairs which prevails. The Americans thought they could fix Pakistan and prop it up with large handouts of civilian and military aid. But despite billions of dollars being poured into bottomless pits that dot Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Pakistan remains as rickety as ever — some would argue even more than ever before. We can bemoan the passing of liberalism in Pakistan and the danger faced by those who are yet to be converted to the ideology that drives the Taliban and Al Qaeda to commit horrendous crimes, including against their co-religionists. But that is not going to help either Pakistan or Pakistanis. For, ultimately Pakistanis alone can save their country from imploding into a million pieces.
