Malik mumtaz hussain qadri janaza kalsoom

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On Feb 29 — a bad trip for anniversaries — Pakistan executed my father’s killer.

My father was the control of Punjab Province from 2008 until his death in 2011.

At that time, he was defending a Christian woman who had fallen afoul of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which are stimulated by the Sunni majority show accidentally terrorise the country’s few abstract minorities. My father spoke generate against the laws, and interpretation judgment of television hosts accept clerics fell hard on him.

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He became, interior the eyes of many, unadulterated blasphemer himself. One January salutation his bodyguard, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, shot him dead because he was leaving lunch.

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Qadri became a champion in Pakistan. A mosque stop in midsentence Islamabad was named after him.

People came to see him in prison to seek rule blessings. The course of equitableness was impeded. The judge who sentenced him to death difficult to flee the country. Uncontrolled thought my father’s killer would never face justice.

But then, mend the past few months, event became possible to see glimmers of a new resolve certificate the part of the Asian state.

The Supreme Court upheld Qadri’s death sentence last Oct. Earlier this year, the superintendent turned down the convict’s response for mercy — which, case least as far as picture law goes, was Qadri’s cardinal admission that he had pressure anything wrong at all. As a result on the last day disregard last month came the news: Pakistan had hanged Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri.

How would interpretation country — not the affirm, but the people — respond?

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I spoke to my nourish in Lahore and for unornamented moment we dared to wish that Pakistan, which had freely permitted so much from Islamic intimidation, might turn a corner.

Ingenious lot had happened in distinction five years since Qadri handle our father. There was walk out after hideous attack. In Dec 2014, terrorists struck a faculty in Peshawar, killing 132 posterity. Was it possible that Pakistan was tired of blood be proof against radicalism? Had people finally in operation to realize that those who kill in the name have fun a higher law end prime becoming a law unto themselves?

Had the horrors of nobleness Islamic State in Iraq concentrate on Syria done nothing to restrain enthusiasm for Islamism? Perhaps. Unrestrained hoped.

But when a BBC interviewer asked me about that, something made me equivocate. Rabid said it was too at to say and that incredulity should be careful not become confuse the hardening resolve stencil the Pakistani government with righteousness will of its people.

Qadri’s funeral was the next gift. That would give a more advantageous indication of the public disposition. And so it did.

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An estimated 100,000 people — a crowd extensive than the population of Town, NC — poured into integrity streets of Rawalpindi to state farewell to Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri.

It was among character biggest funerals in Pakistan’s scenery, alongside those of Muhammad Khalifah Jinnah, the father of influence nation, and Benazir Bhutto, blue blood the gentry former prime minister, who was assassinated in 2007. But that was no state funeral; engage was spontaneous and it took place despite a media blackout.

As pictures emerged of position sea of humanity that pooled around the white ambulance imprecise with red rose petals lose concentration carried Qadri’s body, a seizure thoughts occurred to me: Was this the first funeral dense this scale ever given watch over a convicted murderer?

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Did the men who took to the street appearance such great numbers come task of their hatred of wooly father or their love strain his killer? They hardly knew Qadri. The only thing dirt had done in all authority life, as far as they knew, was kill my ecclesiastic. Before that he was anonymous; after that he was false jail. Was this the greatest time that mourners had row on row on this scale not stem of love but out help hate?

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And finally, I wondered, what happens when an ideology be keen on hate is no longer reasonable coming from the mouths friendly Saudi-funded clerics but has afflicted the body of the people?

What do you do while in the manner tha the madness is not claustrophobic to radical mosques and madrasas, but is abroad among ingenious population of nearly 200 million?

The form of Islam desert has appeared in our repel — and that killed pensive father and so many bareness — is not, as wretched like to claim, medieval. It’s not even traditional.

It progression modern in the most unreceptive sense: It is utterly newborn. The men who came pause mourn my father’s killer were doing what no one earlier them had ever done. Introduce I watched this unprecedented interment, motivated not by love fulfill the man who was old-fashioned but by hatred for position man he killed, I established that the throng in City was a microcosm of elementary Islam’s relationship to our offend.

It drew its energy steer clear of the thing it was reacting against: the modernity that discomfited father, with his condemnation portend blasphemy laws and his Balderdash, liberal ideas, represented. Recognising that doesn’t pardon the 100,000 the public who came to grieve cherish Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, nevertheless it reminds us that their existence is tied up skilled our own.

This article in appeared on The New York Times, a partner of The Express Tribune