Pondering Islam: Who is hijacking Whom?

Jonah Goldberg (January 7, 2011) says that for years we have been hearing about how the peaceful religion of Islam has been hijacked by extremists. What if it is the other way around? Worse, what if the peaceful hijackers are losing their bid to take over the religion? He points to the example of what occurred in Pakistan recently. Salman Taseer, a popular Pakistani governor, was assassinated early in January of 2011 because he was critical of Pakistan's blasphemy law. Specifically, Taseer was supportive of a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, who has been sentenced to death for "insulting Muhammad." Bibi had offered some fellow farm laborers some water. They refused to drink it because Christian hands apparently make water unclean. An argument followed. She defended her faith, which they took as synonymous with attacking theirs. Later, she says, a mob of her accusers raped her. Naturally, a Pakistani judge sentenced her to hang for blasphemy. And Governor Taseer, who bravely visited her and sympathized with her plight, had 40 bullets pumped into him by one of his own bodyguards. "Salmaan Taseer is a blasphemer and this is the punishment for a blasphemer," Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri said to the television cameras even as he was being arrested. The conclusion Goldberg reaches is that it is hard to say who is the hijacker and who is the hijackee. After all, Taseer the moderate was a prominent politician, Qadri a mere bodyguard. Goldberg’s point, of course, is that the moderate Taseer who was trying to change the status of quo for the punishment in an Islamic State of one who “blasphemes” Islam by adhering to another faith. This example seems to show that “moderates” are trying to “hijack” an extremist  religion. In fact, a group of more than 500 leading Muslim scholars, representing what the Associated Press describes a "moderate school of Islam" and the British Guardian calls the "mainstream religious organizations" in Pakistan not only celebrated the murder, but also warned that no Muslim should mourn Taseer's murder or pray for him.