Calling It Like It Is

It is hard to tell very unpopular truths.  In the West to do so is to run the risk of falling afoul the myrmidons of political correctness, the minions of multi-cultural affection, or simply those who cow down to the fear of maybe, perhaps, offending someone's sensitivities somewhere, somehow.  In other countries, Pakistan is on the list near the top, to tell it like it is means to run the very real and present hazard of being killed by a person so warped by the perverse messages of faith as to lose his mental and moral moorings.

In the recent weeks a pair of blunt spoken advocates of human rights, particularly the right to one's personal conscience, have made it plain what is at stake in the struggle between the advocates of violent political Islam and their opponents.  The pair are French president Nicholas Sarkozy and Pakistani member of parliament Sherry Rehman.

In a speech a week ago to an interfaith conference in Paris, M. Sarkozy set his sights on the Mideast.  In specific he drew a steady bead on the violence perpetrated by Muslims on Christians.  He stated the campaign of bombings, shootings, beatings, and general intimidation was an effort at "religious cleansing."  The phrase is redolent of the damning "ethnic cleansing" against which the US and other countries employed armed force a bit more than a decade ago.

M. Sarkozy linked the two forms of "cleansing" as conjoined twins of evil.  As the French president sees life and the world, "religious cleansing" deserves the same sort of active opposition as did ethnic cleansing in the ruins of Yugoslavia.  The Muslim attacks on Christians as well as the lame efforts of Muslim majority governments to protect Christians are, in M. Sarkozy's view, assaults on the liberty of conscience, which is a bedrock principle on which French society and polity have existed for a mort of years.

Sherry Rehman is a pillar of courage in a swamp of cowardly violence.  She is a principled person whose goal is simply human rights for all Pakistanis--including Christians.  In this she is following the course set by Pakistan's founding father.  Her specific goal at the moment is the ending of the Zia era blasphemy laws.  To this end the former government minister and PPP heavyweight has introduced a Private Member's Bill to end the death threat of the blasphemy law.

As a consequence the lady has been marked for death by assorted clerics of the political Islam end of the Muslim spectrum.  She has been declared officially by these men as an "infidel," and branded "worthy of death" in fatwa after bloody fatwa.  No doubt all these death messages were presented in the name of "Allah the Merciful and Compassionate."

Thus the probability of Ms Rehman being done to death by a True Believer in the same manner as Salmaan Taseer is high, very high.  President Zardiiri with the courage of a startled rabbit has urged Ms Rehman to leave the country until the "situation is stabilized."  With a physical courage which matches her moral and intellectual bravery, Ms Rahmen has spurned the request.  Pakistan is her country and there she will live and die, triumph or fail.

Surrounded by tens of thousands of fear driven, insecure men who seek an identity in True Belief, the stance taken by Ms Rahmen can only excite the greatest respect.  She transcends borders with her stance and her courage.  Even should she die under the assassin's knife or gun, the coward's bomb, Ms Rehman must serve as a beacon for any and all Pakistanis who seek to see their country among the ranks of the Civilized States rather than within the narrow and reactionary tribe represented by such as Taliban in all its incarnations or al-Shabaab or the assorted Baby al-Qaedas--or the Iran of today.

The reformers of Pakistan are at the point of decision.  They can leave for the West which will welcome them.  They can lay low, hide out, talk only to one another, and hope the clerics and their mobs miss them.  Or, like the late Punjabi governor Salmaan Taseer and Ms Rehman, take a stand and fight it out against the forces of the Eighth Century.  They may die, but in that case their deaths will mean something.  If they do nothing, they will live with the knowledge that they failed in their obligation to themselves and their fellow countrymen.

M. Sarkozy for his part has tossed down the gauntlet to his fellow Western leaders.  They can either take up his challenge and repudiate the "religious cleansing" underway throughout the Muslim majority states with all the instruments of national power at their disposal or they can remain silent.  They can either stand on the side of the most basic human right of freedom of conscience or they can in their denial surrender to the forces of reactionary fear driven prejudice and hate.

The US and UK no less than France have long stood for freedom of belief.  It would be shameful as well as self defeating for either Prime Minister Cameron or President Obama to fail to measure up to the French President.  It is to be hoped that M. Sarkozy will bring the matter of Christian killing, Christian intimidation, Christian terror to the attention of Mr Obama when they meet in Washington a few days hence.  It is to be devoutly hoped that Obama will shed his pose of multi-culturalism and tell it like it is with respect to events in Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Nigeria, and other Muslim majority states.

Quite simply the "religious cleansing" deserves the same measure of response as did the ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia.  Any less is to say the assorted conventions on human rights espoused by the UN and subscribed to by the US as well as all the Muslim majority states are, as Bismark once was reputed to have said, "mere scraps of paper."  It is also to cast aside a foundational principle of the US.

For the American president as for the reformers of Pakistan the choice is simple: Fight or surrender.  For the US, the second choice is to admit to self-inflicted defeat.