Too late to put the radical genie back in the bottle?

The killing in Pakistan of the Governor of Punjab by his own bodyguard on Tuesday, marks a devastating new high water mark both inside and outside that country. It comes in the wake of a year in which Christian communities all over the Middle East and beyond have come under pressure.
Against a backdrop in which Iraq has proved the infernal crucible for religious intolerance in which a thousand more of the country’s Christians have had to flee and in which many have been killed – in one instance amid the bombing of their church – it is important to take stock.

New year saw the attack on a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria in Egypt in which 21 Egyptian Christians died.

Now there is the Pakistan assassination in which pressure on Christians has reportedly again played a part. The Governor, Salman Taseer had been prominent in attempting to defend Asia Bibi. She’s a Christian who was condemned to death last November under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws – laws Mr Taseer had also been more than prominent in attempting to reverse.

Two questions are in the air today. When two of the most openly-declared Christians to lead either Britain or America in recent times – Tony Blair and George W Bush – led the war on Iraq in 2003, what role has it subsequently played in the oppression of Christians in the region? And what role are the Saudis playing in the continued religiously-led radicalisation of of Pakistan?

Saudi Arabia’s embrace of, and dedicated export of Wahibiism, is most clearly identified in Pakistan through the hundreds of Saudi-funded madrassas. One of the central tenets of Wahabiism is the refusal to tolerate rival religious practices. Saudi funding for Iraqi Sunni Islamic groups – banned under Saddam, have been allowed free reign since US led invasion. Saudi funded madrassas, book shops and publishing in Britain are also claimed to be radicalising ethnic British Pakistani Britons.

The roles of messrs Blair, Bush, and the Saudi king, are unlikely to be uppermost in the minds of those see today’s state funeral for the dead Governor of Punjab. In any case many who have studied and reported the region fear that it is already too late to put the radical genie back in the bottle.