Harris Khalique: The rise of the bigots

A respected and senior bilingual journalist in one of his Urdu columns in the daily Jang went a little further and said that criticising Islamic punishments amounts to profanity. To him, westernised NGOs are doing it for dollars. The JUI-F leader found it to be a plot against the accord reached in Swat between the father and the son-in-law representing the TNSM and the Taliban, respectively. He also blamed the NGOs for blowing an incident out of proportion, which actually may not have happened. Unfortunately, the provincial information minister of the ANP thinks the same way.

But the masterpiece is yet to come. Behold. The new but not-so-fresh Amir of Jamaat-e-Islami believes that the years of Taliban rule in Afghanistan were one of the golden periods of Muslim history. Clearly alluding to the view that what the Taliban are doing in Pakistan is totally correct. Which means that as a citizen of Pakistan, an ordinary Muslim who believes in creating a modern, rational society where the rights of everybody who lives here, whether a woman, a minority person, a peasant or a prime minister, are equal, I must follow what the Taliban say. It is they who can establish such a state. They are the saviours, ones who guarantee a just and prosperous future to the teeming millions of this country.