Extremism abhorred

On Lateline last night, Pakistan’s religious affairs minister, Muhammad Ijaz-ul-Haq, was interviewed on the aggressive political clamp-down by the country’s military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf.

In a nutshell, Mr Ijaz-ul-Haq said there’s basically nothing to worry about. The suspension of the constitution and the judiciary, the mass arrests, the violent suppression of street demonstrations and all the rest of it are but a “very small phase that we have to go through.”

Fear not, for democracy and the rule of law will return “once [Musharraf] is an elected president of Pakistan.”

The actions of Musharraf’s government were necessary because “the entire law enforcing agencies were getting demoralised and the extremists were getting opportunities to, you know, exploit this demoralisation...”

Mr Ijaz-ul-Haq’s abhorrence of extremism should be well-known. When in June the UK government conferred a knighthood on Salman Rushdie, Mr Ijaz-ul-Haq was quoted as saying:

If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Muhammad, his act is justified. This is an occasion for the [world’s] 1.5 billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision. If Muslims do not unite, the situation will get worse and Salman Rushdie may get a seat in the British parliament.

Mr Ijaz-ul-Haq’s abhorrence of extremism is apparently surpassed only by his abhorrence of democratic processes leading to the wrong outcomes.