Author: Nicholas D. Kristof
Publication: The New York Times
Date: June 21, 2002
Before recounting how President
Clinton burned alive dozens of Christians (this feint is known in the column
trade as baiting the right), let me offer a quick historical quiz: What
religion were Muhammad's parents?
You might think that they, like
most people in Arabia in the sixth century, probably worshiped tribal gods
and idols. It might seem difficult for anyone to have been a Muslim before
Muhammad.
If that's what you think, bite your
tongue if you visit Pakistan.
Dr. Younus Shaikh, a teacher at
a medical college, sits in a brick prison here, after being sentenced to
death for blasphemy last year. I couldn't interview him because the warden
caught me trying to slip into the prison as a visitor (I didn't look like
a family member). But the issues are clear.
During a lecture, Dr. Shaikh digressed
and allegedly speculated that Muhammad's parents may not have been Muslims,
and that before receiving God's revelations at the age of 40, Muhammad
might not have shaved his pubic hair.
That was a scandalous charge: pious
Pakistani men shave their armpits and pubic hair but not their faces. As
for the speculation about Muhammad's parents, that was held to be blasphemous
because of Koranic verses suggesting that prophets like Abraham (and thus
why not others?) could be considered Muslims, in the literal Arabic meaning
of the word, which is people who submit to God.
Dr. Shaikh is one of several hundred
people facing execution in Pakistan from this modern Islamic Inquisition.
Many are religious minorities who sometimes are sentenced to death simply
for using the standard greeting of the Islamic world, "as-salaam aleikum."
That means "peace be with you," but militants say the phrase is reserved
for Muslims.
The West is full of irresponsible
vituperations about Islam being no more than a religion of violence and
hatred. The vitriol amounts to an unrecognizable caricature to anyone who
has lived in the Islamic world, enjoyed its hospitality and admired the
dignity it confers on its humblest believers. Yet the bottom line is that
nobody so distorts, denigrates and defames Islam as radical Muslims themselves,
particularly the mullahs who try to have people executed for saying "peace
be with you."
Abdul Rashid Ghazi, a thoughtful,
well-educated imam in Islamabad, asked me why the fuss over Dr. Shaikh,
one man, when America has killed thousands in Afghanistan. I replied that
blasphemy raises a larger concern for Islam itself: like Christianity in
the Middle Ages, the Islamic world today suffers from a stultifying closed-mindedness
and intellectual rigidity that impoverishes Muslim countries and in some
cases endangers their neighbors.
Fundamentally, Pakistan's biggest
problem today is not India but this close-mindedness. Pakistan has an industrious
and often entrepreneurial people, a well-educated elite, a modernizing
leader who could be another Ataturk and mullahs who try to block discussion
about emerging from the Middle Ages.
Most Pakistanis would like to see
blasphemy laws repealed and seem aghast at the mullahs' effort to cripple
the Pakistani economy by banning interest payments. But while the religious
parties win less than 5 percent of the votes in elections, they command
huge influence because few dare disagree with them publicly.
One of the few public figures who
took on the fanatics is Moinuddin Haider, the interior minister. The radicals
responded by shooting his brother to death. So while there are many sensible
Pakistanis, few pipe up to counter the weird lies, conspiracy theories
and claptrap that ensnare Dr. Shaikh and all of Pakistan.
That leads me to how I heard about
President Clinton executing the Christians. One of the mullahs I interviewed,
Abdul Wahid Qasmi, asked: Since America executes blasphemers, why shouldn't
Pakistan?
After what happened to Daniel Pearl,
journalists these days try not to be too impertinent when interviewing
Pakistani clerics. But I politely suggested that he might search his belfry
for bats.
Mr. Qasmi still insisted that America
burns heretics. As evidence, he plucked an Urdu book and began reading
aloud about the Clinton administration burning scores of Americans after
they blasphemed Jesus.
"The leader of the heretics," he
said, "was named David Koresh."
