My friend and colleague, Salim Mansur, writes a weekly column for the Sun chain (& others). His latest column decries the attacks on Muslims who speak with moderate and moderating voices (as he does). His concluding paragraph is both accurate and depressing:
I witnessed that genocide first-hand [in Pakistan/Bangladesh in 1971]. And now I watch from some distance the predictable implosion of a nuclear weapon state and the slide of a whole region into the dark bowels of barbarism.
It is even more than depressing; it is frightening. And there is no easy solution.
As he says in the column,
A few days after the church bombing [of the coptic Christian church in Egypt], Salman Taseer, governor of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, was gunned down by a member of his elite security detail in Islamabad, the country’s capital.
Taseer represented the rapidly dwindling number of Pakistanis who may publicly describe themselves as “liberal” or “secular” Muslims.
Taseer’s crime — according to the accused killer and the majority of Pakistanis who likely approve of the murder — was his request for presidential clemency for a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, detained on death row under the country’s blasphemy law, and his effort to repeal this reprehensible statute.
The accused murderer of Taseer, when brought to court for indictment, was greeted with a shower of rose petals, and by several hundred lawyers prepared to defend him at no cost.
U.S. aid (bribes) has clearly not been an overwhelming success in Pakistan.