Confronting primitive Islam and personal courage.

G.K. Chesterton observed:

We often read nowadays of the valor or audacity with which some rebel attacks a hoary tyranny or an antiquated superstition. There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers.

The odious Andres Serrano is an example of the first kind of "rebel" about whose "art works" the less you know the better. Think dung beetle and go no further.

Needless to say, Serrano's famous anti-Christian meisterstȕck resulted in no backlash from U.S. Christians more worrisome than finding that a sock has gone missing in the wash. Christians ably fulfilled their 20th-century role as feeble granny in this titanic struggle with an honest to gosh blasphemer.

The late Mr. Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab Province in Pakistan at the time of his recent assassination, was a man of sterner stuff. He defended a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, who allegedly "insulted" Mohammed. Not crawling on your Christian belly in the presence of your Muslim betters probably counts as an insult to Mohammed up them hollers but, in truth, some co-workers complained that she had, well, insulted The Him.^[1]

The horrific use of blasphemy laws in Pakistan is difficult to read about. It's nothing more than a story of state-sanctioned vigilantism ready to step in at any point whenever a Muslim has a dispute with a Christian, wants to welsh on a debt to a Christian, wants a Christian's lands, wants to set up a food stand in front of a Christian's place of business, or objects to a Christian's unwillingness to convert to Islam -- and wants to get a leg up by, well, bearing false witness.

Murder (sometimes by cops), imprisonment, beatings, sexual abuse, and other forms of mistreatment occur on the thinnest of evidence,^[2] invariably involving the Christian victim's first having inexplicably determined that life for him or her -- as a tiny minority in a rabidly Muslim society like Pakistan -- can most certainly be made better by finding creative ways to provoke Muslim neighbors.

Deciding to kick a rabid dog in Topeka is an activity with equivalent life-improvement potential.

Anyway, Mr. Taseer urged that Ms. Bibi be pardoned, which outraged whatever portion of the hanging-by-a-thread Islamic community there that wasn't already outraged over something and his fate was sealed.

Mr. Taseer was defying one of those "tyrannies young as the morning" and he was gunned down by one of his own security detail. The killer, this vigilante, was in turn . . . are you ready? . . . showered with rose petals in the court room by attorneys. Back outside he was given a necklace of flowers by one of the 200 supporters waiting for him, whom he obliged with the familiar "Cogito ergo sum," Pakistani for "God is great."

Persecution for blasphemy is bad enough, but Jamat Ahle Sunnat, an organization of that represents Pakistan's majority Barelvi sect further makes it clear that someone who supports a blasphemer is also a blasphemer.

"The supporter is as equally guilty as one who committed blasphemy," the group warned in a statement, adding that politicians, the media and others should learn "a lesson from the exemplary death."

Jamat [Ahle Sunnat] leader Maulana Shah Turabul Haq Qadri paid "glorious tribute to the murderer … for his courage, bravery and religious honor and integrity."^[3]

Mourning for Mr. Taseer is one way to support Taseer the blasphemer. Verb. sap.

There are other courageous people in Pakistan seeking to tamp down the hyper-Islamic hysteria that skitters about like a blue filigree of electricity seen just before the arrival of the Terminator. The courage of those people is immense given that it's open season on them if a street sweeper or file clerk feels like concocting a story to advance a personal agenda. Somehow that, the possibility of personal gain, ends up being the farthest thing from the minds of officials instead of the notion that some Christian has laid an outdated calendar with Koranic verses on the table to defame Islam. No. To them the latter concept makes perfect sense.

There are occasional vindications of the accused but even just a glimpse of the Pakistani legal system can only teach that that vindication must surely be something accidental. Besides, the legal system is a complete irrelevancy where, as here, it overlaps with the seventh century. Talk about time travel.

Now, just as an aside, ask yourself why we should allow any Muslim in this pathetic country to emigrate to the United States. What do these people, who drink pretextual assassination of infidels with their mother's milk, know about law or justice and what exactly have they got that would be a contribution to our lives instead of just a sad duplication here of what they have enthusiastically created back home over the centuries?

Notes
^[1] Asia Bibi. Wikipedia.
^[2] Even if one is acquitted of the charge of blasphemy, the danger of vigilantism is such that the former accused either goes into hiding or flees the country. This would be the same Pakistan that thinks all the world should legislate against the defamation of religion. Blasphemy law in Pakistan. Wikipedia.
^[3] "Pakistan governor's suspected assassin hailed as hero." By Babar Dogar, Associated Press, 1/5/11.

UPDATE (1/9/11):

Pam Geller has a story on a march by tens of thousands of Muslims in Pakistan in support of Pakistani blasphemy laws.

She has these choice words:

The march of these Muslims (below) is consistent with adherence to Islamic teachings/law in Islam's 1,400 year history. Any moderate, reasoned voices in Islam are eliminated. Always.

(Emphasis added.)