most of the time, i write blogs because they give me a chance to show how smart i am, to validate my intellect amongst a handful of people who read them. some days, they even make me think that i am a 'great' person who is affecting change.
that's bullshit. one blog post doesn't change shit.
but perhaps a consistent, constant and clear stream of conscience-based ideas can, over a great length of time, get people to start thinking differently.
even then, change doesn't come about through thoughts - its when those thoughts become actions that we get to see change.
but consistency is a fickle monster to tame.
when i logged on this morning, the chattering clouds were awash with the flood of salman taseer's murder.
and many of us, petrified by the killing of someone who held the same vices as us chose to don the cloak of sanctimony, and condemned the heinous acts of those who were celebrating this death.
and in doing so, we all willingly waded into the already rancid cesspool of contradictions which is our society.
for starters, celebrating deaths is a pretty shitty act.
but if we start thinking that it is a refuge only taken by the stone-age , FATA-living, honor-killing, beard-measuring fundamentalists, we need to think again.
for starters, one of the reportedly eight fan pages of taseer's killers had over a 100 fans. when i clicked through their profiles, they were also fans of stuff like Enrique Iglesias, Family Guy, 300, Coke Studio, the Godfather.
a prominent ahmed qureshi-clone blogger, dan qayyum, constantly tweeted that it was time to take out all the liberal extremist cunts. his previous tweets had been about how roy hodgson wasn't good enough his beloved liverpool.
see the contradictions here?
unfortunately, its not like those of us who stood under the banner of liberal or humanist values have never done the exact same.
honestly, did you go around feeling horrified when people celebrated the death of baitullah mehsud? or have you been one of the many people who tweeted or facebook statused or whatever that it is horrid to speak ill of the dead, before unleashing a tirade against the still-dead zia ul haq for his murderous policies?
i don't want to speak of ill of governor taseer, but i also don't want his death to be a moment where we whitewash the past.
his death was barbaric, and there is no denying that.
but if we feel sick, its also because we fear that we are going to be killed too. not because of how we feel for asia bibi, because if we truly cared we would have taken to the streets a long time ago.
but because like the deceased governor, we enjoyed the acts our state holds illegal, and like the governor we could enjoy them because of the power we wield.
the problem with pakistan is extremism, but let's not fool ourselves that its only one side that's extreme. we keep running further to the side of intolerance, we keep getting more and more bigoted. and then we tell ourselves that only the other side is to blame.
to be honest, i can't say much for the future of pakistan etc, because what is the point of that debate? we can't even have a moment of understanding anything amongst ourselves. we can't even look into our own contradictions in an honest way.
i am not trying to hold onto my usual blogging alter-ego of being holier than thou. and i am frankly sickened by all that has developed today. but somewhere, i can also see that i am not sickened because of my principles but because of my fears. and i'm not alone here.
when we act out of fear, we act in a fucked up way. the guard who shot taseer knew deep inside that he wasn't doing so for the sake of the Prophet - he knew he could just use that as a cover up. he did so because he feared the kind of pakistan where salman taseer could fulfil his ideals. he was afraid.
and now we are just as afraid, because we fear a pakistan where malik qadri's ideals are going to get fulfilled.
i want to write something authoritative like 'we must not act out of fear' but i know that's me trying to act all cool and brave. the reality is that i am not sure i can start expunging such deep seated fears from my self. i can't really ask you to do the same.
[edit: i have removed the following lines "he took a stand yes, but in light of all his other stands, it was more in line with his constant stance of needling the provincial government of the PML-N rather than his own belief in the ultimacy of human rights." because as @mypplwannajump and @sisyphusgrey point out, its unfair to reduce his stance to just that. fair point in my view. i would still implore against letting our anger blur our vision of the past, but still the governor had a strong principled background on this issue.]