“Shoot us”

by  Mazhar Arif 

Urdu press and leading television channels, played a catalytic role in what happened. They lament that the responsibility of Taseer’s assassination rests with the irresponsible media and its howling and yelling anchors. The Jamaat-e-Islami and Sipah-e-Sahaba affiliated journalists and analysts in the media berated and maligned Taseer for supporting poor Christian rural worker Aasia Bibi
On the sad assassination of Governor Punjab Salman Taseer, a journalist, Jahanzaib Haque, commented on a blog, “The time for change has come. Please just arrest me if necessary …, but do something! Make an example of someone, anyone! If you do not have the guts to round up, arrest and make a public example of every one of those hooligans who danced on the streets, posing for photo-ops with burning effigies of late Governor Salman Taseer then at least arrest me and my ilk; throw away the key if one of us so much as whispers the word wajibul qatl in a public sphere.
Fine my publisher for allowing such remarks to be passed. Register a case. Give PEMRA the opportunity to do its job and shut down the entire media organization if necessary. Ban all religious debate in the media, be it positive or negative, for the sake of this country in crisis. Just do it…surely you have enough power to be able to take out their rabid, support group spewing hate on prime time TV and in print, don’t you? Are you even aware of the laws, rules and regulations which the media must follow? Are you aware that being the government means you can actually ‘govern’.
I implore you, please take me and my fellow journalists and media personalities out and shoot us like dogs in the desert and leave our corpses to rot if need be. Be bold, be fascist, be militant, be brave – choose any path to ensuring a lock down on the madness that is ‘the media boom’ but stop side-stepping what needs to be done in this twisted field we have dubbed journalism.”
Haque’s rage, disappointment and helplessness is manifestation of the frustration which most of the journalists in Pakistan feel while working in media organizations which have come under total control of fanatic and fascist politico-religious forces. Because of the so-called talk shows and news and views disseminated by media not only the assassin Mumtaz Qadri but so many other people were made to believe that Salman Taseer was a blasphemer.
A particular talk show hosted by one Mehar Bokhari on Samaa TV, while interviewing Taseer, constantly traded accusations with him that put him on the defensive and gave the impression that he was somehow not being honest about his views on the blasphemy law. Besides, his press briefing with Aasia Bibi in jail and the common perception that he, a politician who would never speak the truth, was reinforced. Sections of the media actively gave airtime to people who accused him of committing blasphemy. Disproportionate coverage was given to clerics who declared it an obligation on Muslims to kill blasphemers and offered cash rewards. Understandably, many journalists openly sided with the fascists.
Many sane minds are suggesting that media portrayals of Salman Taseer and blasphemy law fall within a category of ‘incitement of violence’. The media, especially Urdu press and leading television channels, played a catalytic role in what happened. They lament that the responsibility of Taseer’s assassination rests with the irresponsible media and its howling and yelling anchors. The Jamaat-e-Islami and Sipah-e-Sahaba affiliated journalists and analysts in the media berated and maligned Taseer for supporting poor Christian rural worker Aasia Bibi.
This media persons’ transformation from secular, moderate into hardcore ultra-rightist, and in some cases religious fanatic, has not occurred in a day. It is the work of decades of religion-exploiting forces who have ultimately occupied key positions in media organizations.
A report produced by International Media Support in September 2009 on media in Pakistan, says, in a way, Pakistani print media came into existence with a mission to promulgate the idea of Pakistan…The need for self-defense runs deeply in Pakistani identity and the Pakistani army is one of the caretakers of this identity and it is seen as the defender of the national identity which is formed by alertness towards India with the national religion.
The emphasis on Islam as a major pillar of national identity has led to an alliance between the custodians of Islam - the religious leaders with the military, government institutions and the intelligence services. The nexus between these national guardians has had a huge influence on Pakistani media as they argue that they defend national identity and interests as a way to justify controlling the media. Religious leaders have promulgated blasphemy laws that have curbed freedom of expression and the intelligence services have manipulated the media.
The report further says that radical Islamist influence on the media first manifested itself in the 1950s, when the government in Punjab used the media to promote radical views against the Ahmadis. The newspaper “Nawa-e-Waqt” was among the papers receiving money from the Punjab government to incite public anger against the Ahmadis. Since then, radical groups and political parties, such as Jamaat-i-Islaami, Sipahi-Sahaba, and more recently the Pakistani Taliban, have infiltrated the mainstream media.
In this backdrop one should not wonder when Saleem Bokhari, editor of The Nation, in his program, Bolta Pakistan on Aaj TV on January 10, after the assassination of Taseer, said, “I don't understand as to how a Muslim can be liberal." He made these remarks in response to co-host Oriya Maqbool Jan's remark that the West had divided Muslims into fundamentalists and liberals. Oriya Maqbool Jan in a column in Urdu daily Express on 8 January equated Qadri with Ilmuddin and boasted that Mohammad Ali Jinnah himself defended Ilmuddin in the court. Oriya Maqbool Jan is a former information secretary of Government of Punjab and reportedly a former Islami Jamiat-e-Talba nazim in Gujrat. In the same column he made some strange claims about how Jews were treated, rather mistreated, in the West. He said that they are treated like dirt.
The embarrassing treatment with Dr Pervez Hoodbhai in a talk show is a shameful example of projecting Qadri’s supporters as heroes. In Pervez Hoodbhai’s own words which he wrote in a letter to a friend:
“Yesterday a TV program on blasphemy (Samaa, hosted by Asma Shirazi) was broadcast. Asma had pleaded that I participate. So I did - knowing fully well what was up ahead.  But I could not bear to watch the broadcast and turned it off after a few minutes.
My opponents were Farid Paracha (spokesman, Jamaat-e-Islami) and Maulana Sialvi (Sunni Tehreek, a Barelvi and supposed moderate). There were around 100 students in the audience, drawn from colleges across Pindi and Islamabad.
Even as the mullahs frothed and screamed around me (and at me), I managed to say the obvious: that the culture of religious extremism was resulting in a bloodbath in which the majority of victims are Muslims; that non-Muslims were fleeing Pakistan; that the self-appointed "thaikaydars" of Islam in Pakistan were deliberately ignoring the case of other Muslim countries like Indonesia which do not have the death penalty for blasphemy; that debating the details of Blasphemy Law 295-C did not constitute blasphemy; that American Muslims were very far from being the objects of persecution; that harping on drone attacks was an irrelevancy to the present discussion on blasphemy.
The response? Not a single clap for me. Thunderous applause whenever my opponents called for death for blasphemers. And loud cheers for Qadri, the murderer. When I directly addressed Sialvi and said he had Salman Taseer's blood on his hand, he exclaimed "How I wish I did!" (kaash ke main hota!).
Dr Pervez Hoodbhai concludes in his letter that his country is destined to drown in blood from civil war. I wish people would stop writing rubbish about Pakistan having an image problem. It's the truth that's really the problem.

Mazhar Arif is a senior journalist, media critic, researcher, writer and people’s rights activist presently working as Executive Director, Society for Alternative Media and Research (SAMAR), an organization seeking space for voices of the voiceless in the media and engaged with promoting media literacy to enable readers, viewers and listeners to understand and analyze media contents.