Mumtaz Qadri was no saintPEOPLE from many walks of life poured onto the streets of Rawalpindi near Islambad, Pakistan’s capital, on March 1st to honour a convicted murderer. Among the 100,000 or so mourners who crammed into Liaquat Park and surrounding streets were lawyers wearing the black suits of their profession, labourers bused in from around the country and even the odd expatriate businessman who had flown in for the occasion. The crowd was full of fury, directed at the government of Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister, for the hanging the day before of Mumtaz Qadri. A former police bodyguard, he had assassinated his boss, Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province, in 2011.
Taseer was a liberal-minded businessman turned politician who had earned the hatred of religious hardliners by lobbying for a presidential pardon for a poor Christian woman. She had been sentenced to death under Pakistan’s infamous blasphemy law that bans disrespect towards the Prophet and other “holy personages”. It was, Taseer said, a “black law”. It is often invoked against religious minorities on the flimsiest of grounds; evidence can...Continue reading
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