Archbishop of Canterbury Comments on Pakistan's Blasphemy Laws

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

Posted On : March 7, 2011 9:46 AM | Posted By : Admin ACO
ACNS: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/news.cfm/2011/3/7/ACNS4809
Related Categories: Lambeth  Pakistan

Dr Rowan Williams: "It is heartbreaking to see
Pakistan?s founding principles betrayed by its blasphemy laws"

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams writing in The Times newspaper

In the history of some countries there comes a
period when political and factional murder
becomes almost routine ? Russia at the beginning
of the 20th century, Germany and its neighbours
in the early 1930s. It has invariably been the
precursor of a breakdown of legal and political
order and of long-term suffering for a whole
population. And last week, with the killing of
Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister for Minorities,
Pakistan has taken a further step down this catastrophic road.

To those who actually support such atrocities,
there is little to say. They inhabit a world of
fantasy, shot through with paranoid anxiety. As
the shocked responses from so many Muslims in
this country and elsewhere make plain, their
actions are as undermining of Koranic ethics as they are of rational politi cs.
But to those who recognise something truly
dreadful going on in their midst ? to the
majority in Pakistan who have elected a
government that, whatever its dramatic
shortcomings, is pledged to resist extremism ? we
have surely to say, ?Do not imagine that this can be ?managed? or tol erated?.

The government of Pakistan and the great majority
of its population are, in effect, being
blackmailed. The widespread and deep desire for
Pakistan to be what it was meant to be, for
justice to be guaranteed for all, and for some of
the most easily abused laws on the statute book
to be reviewed is being paralysed by the threat
of murder. The case of Asia Bibi, so prominent in
the debates of recent months, and the connected
murder of the Governor of the Punjab, make it
crystal clear that there is a faction in Pakistan
wholly uninterested in justice and due process of
law, concerned only with promoting an inhuman pseudo-religious tyranny.

Pakistan was created by Jinnah as a consciously
Muslim state in which nonetheless the non-Muslim
enjoyed an absolute right of citizenship and the
civic securities and liberties that go with it.
In common with the best historical examples of
Muslim governance, there was a realistic and
generous recognition that plural and diverse
convictions would not go away and that therefore
a just Muslim state, no more and no less than a
just Christian or secular state, had to provide
for the rights of its minorities.
If the state?s willingness to guarantee absolute
security for minorities of every kind is a test
of political maturity and durability, whatever
the confessional background, Pakistan?s founding
vision was a mature one. The disdain shown for
that vision by Bhatti?s killers is an offence
against Islam as much as against Christianity in Pakistan.

What needs to change? There needs to be a

rational debate in Pakistan, and more widely,
about the blasphemy laws that are at the root of
so much of this. And this is likely to happen
only if the international Islamic intelligentsia
can form a coherent judgment on the level of
abuse that characterises the practice of the
blasphemy laws in Pakistan. Most Muslim thinkers
are embarrassed by supposedly ?Islamic? laws in
various contexts that conceal murderous
oppression and bullying. Their voices are widely
noted; they need to be heard more clearly in
Pakistan, where part of the problem is the
weakening of properly traditional Islam by the
populist illiteracies of modern extremism.

And there needs to be some credible proof of the
Government of Pakistan?s political will not only
to resist blackmail, but also to assess
realistically the levels of risk under which
minority communities and the individuals who support them live.

Shahbaz Bhatti knew what his chances of survival
were ? as the moving recorded testimony he left
makes plain. He was not protected by the
Government he so bravely served. How many
minority Christian communities, law-abiding,
peaceful and frequently profoundly disadvantaged,
are similarly not protected by their government?
What increased guarantees of security are being offered?

The protection of minorities of any and every
kind is one acid test of moral legitimacy for a
government; and such protection is built into
Pakistan?s modern identity as an Islamic state
with civic recognition for non-Muslims. Many are
anxious about Pakistan?s future for strategic
reasons. But those of us who love Pakistan and
its people are anxious for its soul as well as
its political stability. It is heartbreaking to
see those we count as friends living with the
threat of being coerced and menaced into silence
and, ultimately, into a betrayal of themselves.
This must not be allowed to happen. They need to
know of the support of Christians and others
outside Pakistan for their historic and distinctive vision.

Shahbaz Bhatti died, for all practical purposes,
as a martyr ? let me be clear ? not simply for
his Christian faith, but for a vision shared
between Pakistani Christians and Muslims. When he
and I talked at Lambeth Palace last year, he was
fully aware of the risks he ran. He did not allow
himself to be diverted for a moment from his commitment to justice for all.

That a person of such courage and steadfastness
of purpose was nourished in the political culture
of Pakistan is itself a witness to the capacity
of that culture to keep its vision alive and
compelling. And that is one of the few real marks
of hope in a situation of deepening tragedy that
urgently needs both prayer and action.