But it isn’t only Pakistan which is seemingly facing an existential threat. Islam itself is earning a bad name as the religion increasingly comes to be associated with intolerance. The Pakistan army’s original purpose, therefore, of nurturing terrorism as a weapon of war against India has been distorted and even negated by the self-proclaimed soldiers of Islam like Salman Taseer’s assassin who are following their own agenda.

In the process, Pakistan has turned from an “international migraine”, as former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, once said, to a “cancer”, as President Obama said more recently, to being a “top risk” in 2011, according to the New York-based Eurasia group, which has said that “the risk in the subcontinent this year isn’t AfPak. It’s Pak-Pak”.

What this progressive degeneration means is that terrorism has become a boomerang in the army’s hands which will hit Pakistan rather than its intended target of India. For a start, as a jehadi incubator, Pakistan has weakened its own case on Kashmir. For many years, it was able to sell its line of Indian “occupation” of Kashmir to the international community. There were not many takers for the Indian position that the state enjoyed democratic freedom because of the very visible presence of the army in the valley.

Even when the separatists stepped up their acts of militancy and the inflow of infiltrators from Pakistan steadily increased, Islamabad was able to convince the world that the unrest in Kashmir was the outcome of the people’s opposition to an “oppressive” Indian rule.

But, now, as the perceived nursery of terrorism, Pakistan will not find it easy to persuade the world to let the domain of the jehadis become wider with the acquisition of Kashmir. Besides, the earlier belief that an Indian retreat on Kashmir will induce Islamabad to rein in the militants, as Pervez Musharraf once hinted, is no longer credible in view of the rising clout and daring of the fundamentalists and the steady weakening of the civilian administration. What is more, it is doubtful whether the army will be able to control the terrorist groups even if it wants to.

If the bigots have damaged Pakistan’s case on Kashmir, their growing dominance over civil society, as the unabashed praise of Taseer’s killer by large numbers of people has shown, will make even their patron, the army, wary of engaging them in carrying out another 26/11-style suicide mission in India. As it is, the ISI chief, Ahmed Shuja Pasha, is facing the ignominy of a law suit against him in the US in connection with 26/11. Another attack will make it difficult even for Pakistan’s all-weather friend, China, to stand by it in the face of worldwide condemnation and a possible Indian retaliation.

Instead of planning a covert attack, therefore, Pakistan’s fear may well be that the militants will ignore any counsel of restraint and go ahead on their own, as the recently aborted Mumbai-style operations in European cities suggest. It is difficult to conceive, however, the extent of international wrath if they manage to succeed, which is not impossible given the way in which their confidence is being boosted by the support they are receiving, even on television, over Taseer’s killing and the steady marginalization of the liberal sections, which was small to start with.

The latest assassination is different from Benazir’s because it shows how rapidly Pakistan is regressing into the dark ages with the stifling of enlightened views. While Benazir’s murder was political in nature since her killers wanted to prevent her from coming to power – and perhaps also following a progressive line although this was by no means certain – Taseer’s was purely the act of a fanatic unable to digest a modern world- view.

Of the two countries which came into being on the basis of religion in the late 1940s – Pakistan and Israel – the latter has succeeded in maintaining a democratic society (even if its Arab citizens have a virtual second class status) and kept the army under civilian control because it does not live in awe and envy of a larger neighbour, as Pakistan does. It is Pakistan’s longstanding inferiority complex which enabled the army to become the dominant power at the expense of the civilian leadership. But its worst mistake was the use of terror to destabilize India.

Now, it has landed in a quagmire where the terrorists have shamed the country in the eyes of the world and made it difficult not only for its own citizens, but for any Muslim to say at an immigration counter that “my name is Khan”. (IPA Service)