Naushad:

Please, I would like to see an example of an act of violence being committed by a “liberal extremist”? the answer is simple: there are none.

As for Aafia Siddiqui, I don’t see what she has anything to this discussion, but since you brought it up. I find the whole affair bizarre from beginning to end. The government, as its habit, doesn’t tell us anything. Why was she handed over? How did she end up in Afghanistan? Was she trying to kill a governor? Did she attack American troops? Where is her missing child? The list is endless. It is Pakistan’s duty to protect its citizens, wherever they may be, for whatever crime, or whether they guilty or innocent.

Dear Naushad,

It is incorrect to say that blasphemy law ‘happens to be according to exact interpretation of Sharia’. This is like saying I can’t call the constitution black book because it contains an Ayah from Holy Quran.

The law is not EXACTLY as the Sharia. That’s a big lie. The law has nothing to do with sharia. It was drafted by policemen, legislators and lawyers. It contains matters such as the number of witnesses, number of days in detention, and other procedural issues. None of it is taken from Sharia. It’s all from the penal code and standard operating procedures of the police. This what, unfortunately, leaders of political religious groups are not telling the people depsite knowing it. They are expliting you and me and others for politics. The law can be called black a zillion times. What is according to Sharia is only one thing: that death is the punishment for proven blasphemy. The law includes this line but it’s only one small part. The rest of it is just penal code. A mosque imam and his young son have jailed this week for life under this law. Islamic sharia has no detention pubishment for blasphemy but this law does. How can this man-made law then be ‘in strict interpretation of Sharia’ as you claim?

Please, this is a Muslim country and people here don’t indulge in blasphemy for sports. We are not more Muslim than Saudi Arabia and they don’t have a ‘Tauheen e Risalat’ law. They just have death penalty for proven blasphemy. If Salmaan Taseer said it’s a ‘Kala Qanoon’, he and anyone else can say that. He is criticizing Pakistan penal code and a parliamentary law, not the Holy Quran or Sharia. The man died with a chain around his neck with the full Ayat al Kursi. You don’t kill Muslims like this, even if they are not exactly religious. This country is full of thieves and looters. One Maulana is called Diesel, and another Pil Faqir Maulana is stealing money from the Hujjaj and all you people are after is a man like Salman Taseer who, despite all his other failings, at least served this country tremendously and never earned illegal money. All because he showed compassion to a poor Pakistani Christian woman with small children who never intended to be an intentional blasphemer but was prodded to do so by Muslim female sweepers. These Muslim women sweepers should also be tried for committing blasphemy because they claimed our Prophet, PBUH, asked Muslims not to drink water offered by a Christian, which is a lie.

I never liked Taseer’s politics, and I defend the Muslim character of Pakistan and I would never tolerate insults against Islam and our Prophets, peace be upon all of them. But Taseer was not a blasphemer for saying law is black. What happened to parliament and democracy being a western invention? That law is a product of that western invention.

This is not about defending Salman Taseer. This is about the wrong direction we are going. You don’t start spreading Fasaad in your society like this. If we are having a debate, we don’t start treating each other as enemies as start killing each other. If this is what we are going to do, then what have we left for our enemies?!