Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2023 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Pakistan

Death of Pakistani Progressivism?

Juan Cole 01/05/2011

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

Salman Tasir, the governor of Punjab Province in Pakistan, was assassinated by one of his own guards Tuesday, allegedly for his desire to repeal Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which has been increasingly misused by the religious right to target Christians, Ahmadis and secularists. The guard who killed him was not a Deobandi fundamentalist but an adherent of the moderate Barelvi school, and a member of the non-violent Da’vat-i Islam organization.

Tasir’s biography in many ways mirrored the evolution of Pakistan itself. His father was a prominent Urdu poet, among the founders of the Marxist Progressive Writers Movement, and an associate of the leftist writer Faiz Ahmad Faiz. Tasir himself chose capital over labor and became an entrepreneur shuttling between Dubai and London.

But on his return to Pakistan he was active in the Pakistan People’s Party, which itself had largely moved away from its leftist roots toward being a party of the elite. He proved willing to serve in the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, which tainted his reputation in the eyes of many. But he retained a sort of cultural leftism from his family tradition, and that set of commitments led to his killing. His progression from being the son of a progressive poet to being a big businessman tracked with Pakistan’s own turn to neo-liberalism, and his cultural liberalism came up against the rise of a violent religious Right often fostered by the Pakistani military and (before 9/11) the United States. (In the Cold War, the US had encouraged the destruction of the Pakistani Left, and figures such as Gen. Zia ul-Haq were happy to oblige, destroying unions and leaving workers voiceless).

Aljazeera English has video:

Filed Under: Pakistan

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

Twitter

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

Facebook



Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2023 All Rights Reserved

Posting....