Slain Pakistani's daughter takes up his cause

KARACHI, Pakistan – A day after her father was gunned down by an Islamist extremist, a grieving Shehrbano Taseer wrote on Twitter, "A light has gone out in our home today." It wasn't long before the 22-year-old realized something else: Her father's death had lit a fire in her.

In the months since, the daughter of the late Punjab province Gov. Salmaan Taseer has emerged as one of Pakistan's most outspoken voices for tolerance. Through her writing and speaking, she warns any audience who will listen of the threat of Islamist extremism, and impatiently waits for her father's killer to be brought to justice.

And yes, sometimes she gets scared. She's received threats from militants, who've warned her to remember her father's fate.

"These extremists, they want to tell you how to think, how to feel, how to act," says Taseer, a slim, elegant young woman with intense brown eyes. "It has made me more resolute that these people should never win."

Salmaan Taseer was assassinated on Jan. 4 at a market in Islamabad by one of his own bodyguards. The confessed killer, Mumtaz Qadri, boasted that he'd carried out the slaying because the outspoken politician — a liberal in Pakistani terms — wanted to change blasphemy laws that impose the death sentence for insulting Islam.

To the horror of Taseer's supporters, many Pakistanis praised the assassin. Islamist lawyers showered Qadri with rose petals, and major Muslim groups, even ones considered relatively moderate, said Taseer deserved to die because, in their view, speaking out against the blasphemy laws was tantamount to blasphemy itself.

Two months after Taseer's killing, gunmen killed Shahbaz Bhatti, the sole Christian minister in the government and another opponent of the blasphemy laws, which have often been used against Pakistan's Christian minority. Bhatti's killers left a note promising to target others who pushed to change the laws.

Shehrbano Taseer still has trouble remembering those first moments and days after her father's death — her brother telling her their father was gone, the rush of grief, the hundreds of people flooding her family's home in the eastern city of Lahore. Mostly, it's a blur.

"I'd never lost anyone in my life, not a friend or anyone," she says. "For everyone else it was the governor and their leader and this man, and it was this big, sexy story and it was so sensationalist. But for me, it was my father."

Taseer majored in government and film at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and is by profession a journalist. She spends much of her time now writing columns and traveling in and beyond Pakistan to speak about Islamist extremism.

Salmaan Taseer, a father of seven, was not afraid to be blunt — a trait that attracted both enmity and grudging respect. On Twitter, Salmaan Taseer openly taunted and trashed extremists, once tweeting that he'd never back down on the blasphemy issue, "even if I'm the last man standing."

His daughter, who tweets under the handle shehrbanotaseer, is more gentle but just as firm. Her more than 9,000 followers on Twitter often receive notes that criticize Pakistan's discriminatory laws, especially blasphemy claims that have reached the courts since her father's death.

When she singles out a politically marginalized community, either on Twitter or her other outreach, Taseer recalls how well her father treated that group, how he was often the only public official to visit their homes after an attack or publicly speak on their behalf.

Once, Salmaan Taseer took his daughter along on a visit to meet Mukhtar Mai, a Pakistani woman whose case attracted international attention because of allegations that she was gang-raped on the orders of a village council. The governor asked Mai to put her hand on his daughter's head, so that Shehrbano Taseer could gain the same courage to stand up for her rights.

Like her father and Bhatti, the Christian leader, Taseer wants the blasphemy laws amended to prevent their misuse.

The laws are vaguely written, and often used to persecute minorities or settle rivalries, rights activists say. The state has not executed anyone under the law, but the accused may spend years in custody. Some defendants have been killed by extremists after being freed by the courts.

But Taseer has found that many Muslims, even moderate, liberal ones, are extremely sensitive about blasphemy.

She recalls giving a speech in England when a woman in the audience suggested that her father deserved what he got because he was so blunt about the topic.

"I said, 'I don't care what he said, and I don't care how he said it. He didn't deserve to be shot and killed for it,'" Taseer says.

She's dismayed at the toll extremism is taking on Pakistan by spawning violence or an intolerant mindset. She's also disappointed at how few Pakistani leaders are willing to take a public stand against extremism or how many find some reason to excuse it.

She bemoans how for decades moderate or liberal leaders in Pakistan have appeased the religious right for short-lived political gains — whether it was by banning alcohol and nightclubs or passing laws that discriminate against certain religious sects.

Unlike many Pakistani politicians, she's willing to criticize the role Saudi Arabia has played in funding numerous hardline Islamist schools in Pakistan. And she's quick to note that the United States as well as Pakistan says little about it — after all, it needs Saudi Arabia's oil.

Pakistan has a tradition of dynastic politics. The most famous political family has been that of the Bhuttos, which spawned former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, also assassinated by Islamist extremists. Salmaan Taseer was a member of the Bhutto-led Pakistan People's Party.

Shehrbano Taseer says she views Pakistan as an enticing challenge akin to a Rubik's Cube because of its many, convoluted problems. But she says she has no plans to run for office. "It's such a dirty profession," she says, laughing.

Sherry Rehman, a People's Party lawmaker who also has been threatened for speaking out against the blasphemy laws, says Shehrbano Taseer will "chart her own future."

"She's found a torch to carry, and she will do it," Rehman says. "It's what her father would have wanted."

Taseer is frustrated with the Pakistani justice system's delays in processing the case of Qadri, her father's confessed killer.

Pakistan's courts have very low conviction rates, even in terrorism cases. Qadri's confession may not be enough to persuade a court to punish him, considering the threats facing any judge who dares pass such a judgment.

Taseer wants the former bodyguard to spend his life in prison, in solitary confinement. A death sentence is "too easy," and a conviction would send a warning to other would-be assassins, she says.

"In Pakistan, we have very few brave and honest leaders," she says. "We need our heroes alive."

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Reach Nahal Toosi at www.twitter.com/nahaltoosi