A Case Study of the Assassination of Salman Taseer

A Case Study of the Assassination of Salman Taseer

Introduction

People have committed murders since time immemorial. Most are intentional, but others are accidental, such as in the case of man-slaughter. Incidental deaths may happen too, for example, when a bulldozer is demolishing a house, and an uninformed person happens to be walking nearby, and a part of the wall falls on them. Various communities in the world abhor the killing of innocent persons, but then there are assassinations, whose news is always received with mixed reactions depending on who the benefactor is. Assassinations are not a contemporary issue. They have happened right from the beginning of life in the bible when Cain jealously killed Abel, and another instance when King Saul wanted David assassinated so he could not become the successor to the throne. Thus, people can be assassinated for various reasons. This case study will review the incident of the killing of Governor Taseer in the presence of his bodyguards, as well as determine what went wrong while providing recommendations for improvements that should be considered.

Events Leading to the Incident

Hanif (2011) puts it that Salman Taseer was an entrepreneur and a politician allied to the Pakistan People’s Party. His first political stint occurred in 1988 when he was elected to the assembly of Punjab from Lahore. Since then, he served the Pakistani people in various capacities, including as a minister and then as a governor of Punjab’s province from 2008 to January fourth, 2011, when he was assassinated. At the time, Pakistan was under the presidency of Asif Ali Zardari, who was a close friend of Taseer. His job was a ceremonial one where he represented the president. The government of Punjab was headed by Nawaz Sharif, the administration’s official opposition leader.

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PLACE AN ORDER

The events leading to his assassination are as astonishing as the event itself. Taseer was a liberal-minded person in a largely intolerant nation. There was a law that came into force in the 1980s that he was most vocal against. As it was generally referred to, the blasphemy law stated that if an individual was found guilty of defaming Prophet Muhammad and Islam in a court of law, they should be sentenced to execution (Akhter, 2012). Salman was always against this law and its severe sentence, although no one had been sentenced to death ever since it was enacted. At the time, it had become a contention between the conservatively religious and the secular politicians. The governor, noting that the religiously mobilized masses’ hate against him was getting out-of-hand, tried to play down his stance on the law by communicating that he had only wanted it changed, not abolished (Thenews.com.pk, 2011).

Things turned for the worse for him when he publicly declared to support Asia Bibi, a Christian, get out of jail when a court of law sentenced her to death on the eleventh of November 2010. He visited Aasian in jail on November twentieth and promised to forward her pardon application to the president. While there, he referred to the 1980s law as a black law. He defended his statement by saying that the law only promoted hatred and extremism between Islam and other religions. According to him, the law was only enforced during the tyrant’s Zia Haq reign, and that the current Pakistani constitution was for the protection of minorities’ rights. He also argued that the whole of Pakistan had become an international joke because Asian was innocent (Akhter, 2012). He was consequently excommunicated from Islam by Almi Tanzeem Ali Sunnat, an organization that calls for the application of Islam in all spheres of the Muslim community, which also urged the president to sack him from the governorship of Punjab because he was no longer a Muslim. The Governor House’s security was then heightened after it received bomb threats. The International Muslim Organization announced later that whoever would pardon a person guilty of blasphemy would no longer remain a Muslim (TheNews.co.pk, 2011).

Amid the storm, the administrative, religious and social caucus on December seventh, 2010, declared Taseer as contempt-of-court blasphemous Muslim and pleaded with the president to avoid pardoning Aasia Bibi and allow the court process to take its course. Salman was shot at close range by one of his Elite Force Guards on 4th January 2011 when he was boarding his vehicle at Khosar, an Islamabad suburb. He was sixty-six years old at the time (Khan, 2012).

What Went Wrong?

The death shocked the world. Over 500 religious leaders from across the globe regretted that the act would potentially create unprecedented rifts among religions. Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadr, the guar