What Pakistan tells us about the Islam problem, and its solution
The second Pakistani government official in two months
has been assassinated for opposing his country’s death-for-blasphemy law. This hideous news clarifies the ineluctable logic of the Islam problem, which not a single person occupying a responsible public position in the West is capable of understanding:
- According to Islam, if you insult Islam, you must die.
- This Islamic law, so horrible and anti-human, is a scandal to the conscience of humanity, and both non-Muslims and some Muslims naturally get the idea of reforming Islam, so that it will no longer require the death penalty for insulting Islam.
- But as soon as any Muslim speaks up against the Islamic law that requires death for insulting Islam, he is killed by his fellow Muslims. In one form or another, the same event has recurred repeatedly throughout the history of Islam: when anyone tries to reform or humanize the religion, he is killed.
- Therefore no reform of Islam is possible.
This is the reality that not a single person in a responsible public position in the West is yet capable of understanding.
However, though no reform of Islam is possible, this doesn’t mean that no solution to the Islam problem is possible. In fact, there are two, and only two, possible solutions to the Islam problem, one from the non-Muslim point of view, the other from the Muslim point of view.
From the non-Muslim point of view, the only possible solution to the Islam problem is that Islam be segregated and quarantined from the non-Muslim world, so that Islam cannot work its evil and threatening influence on non-Muslim countries.
From the Muslim point of view, the only possible solution to the Islam problem is that Islam cease to exist, meaning that Muslims renounce Islam so that the religion no longer has any influence over them as individuals and as societies.
I realize that this sounds hopelessly extreme. But our current situation is hopelessly extreme, and no one says that therefore it can’t be true! If our current, hopelessly extreme situation can exist, then its sane opposite can also exist.
Currently the two dominant belief systems in the world are liberalism (in the West) and Islam (in the 57 Muslim-majority countries plus the virulent Muslim outgrowths in non-Muslim countries). A world cumulatively dominated by liberalism and Islam is a world spiraling toward a horrible end, with each downward swoop of the spiral more horrible than the last. If the world is to be saved, both liberalism and Islam must be defeated, or at least disempowered, so that other, more sane and viable, belief systems take their place as the dominant belief systems.
* * *
Here is the article about the latest Islamic assassination in Pakistan, in the March 3 issue of The Independent:
Pakistan was reeling last night from the second assassination in as many months of a high-profile politician who spoke out against the country’s draconian blasphemy laws that impose the death penalty for insulting Islam.
Gunmen ambushed Shahbaz Bhatti, the only Christian government minister, outside his mother’s home in Islamabad and sprayed his car with at least 10 bullets, killing him instantly. The assassination was chillingly similar in execution to that of Salmaan Taseer, the Governor of Punjab, who was slain by his own bodyguard in January.
The assassination was claimed by “the al-Qa’ida organisation and the Punjabi Taliban”. Before speeding away, the killers left behind pamphlets boasting of their act. “The only punishment for blasphemy against the Prophet is death,” the pamphlet in Urdu said.
“A white car stopped near us at a crossing,” Mr Bhatti’s driver Gul Sher, who was slightly injured, told reporters. “Four people were sitting in the car. One of them got out with a Kalashnikov … He came in front of the car and opened fire. I ducked. Minister died on the spot.”
The killing has plunged Pakistan’s long-suffering minorities into deeper despair, yet again raising the question of whether they can afford to continue living in the country. Mr Bhatti and Mr Taseer’s attempts to review the draconian blasphemy laws, which have been responsible for persecuting minorities, were cast as an act of blasphemy.
Mr Bhatti, the Minorities Minister, had been receiving threats from militant groups for some time. In a video broadcast on the BBC and Al Jazeera before his death, he said: “The forces of violence, militant banned organisations, the Taliban and al-Qa’ida, want to impose the radical philosophy in Pakistan. Whoever stands against their radical philosophy, they threaten them.”
Pakistan’s Christians came on to the streets. “We’ve been attacked many, many times in our history,” said Shimon Gill, a member of the All Pakistan Minority Alliance. “But now we have been orphaned. Who will speak up for us now?” In Mr Bhatti’s village, Christians torched tyres, beat their chest in protest and denounced the killers.
Mr Bhatti had no guards to protect him. The Pakistan government claims that after Mr Taseer’s assassination by a member of the police team supposed to be guarding him, Mr Bhatti had refused to have bodyguards. But Mr Bhatti’s associates said that he was denied the security he asked for, and was not provided with a bulletproof vehicle.
Threats against Mr Bhatti escalated after he joined Mr Taseer and liberal parliamentarian Sherry Rehman in calling for a review of blasphemy laws. The three politicians were among the few prepared to call attention to the fate of Aasia Noreen, a 45-year-old Christian farmhand sentenced to death for alleged blasphemy. Her supporters dismissed the allegations and said charge stemmed from a falling out with a village elder.
Mr Bhatti, a Roman Catholic member of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, told friends he was prepared to die in pursuit of rights for his community. “These threats … cannot change my opinion and principles,” he said. “I would prefer to die for my principles, and for the justice of my community, rather than compromise on these threats.”
Human rights groups said the assassination laid bare the government’s policy of appeasement towards extremists.
Since Mr Taseer’s assassination, the religious right has gone from strength to strength, mounting huge demonstrations in support of blasphemy laws and exalting his assassin. In recent weeks, they have added to their cause demands that Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor who killed two Pakistani men in Lahore last month, be hanged. Washington is demanding Mr Davis be released.
[end of article]
- end of initial entry -
Gintas writes:
From our point of view Islam is a problem, but from our ruling elite’s point of view it’s a solution—a solution to the “problem” of Western Civilization. They want to smash us into submission (perhaps even oblivion), and what better tool than the religion that means “submit”? As Orwell said in 1984, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” I think that image truly thrills our ruling elite.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 04, 2011 12:07 PM | Send