Professor! Keep your liberal & secular philosophy to yourself!

Professor Khalid Hameed is no more in this world. He has left all his students and faculty colleagues in deep sorrow. The professor did not die of any physical ailment. He did not die due to old age. He did not die because he did not want to live in this world. The truth is that he did not die. He was killed, murdered, assassinated. He was stopped from living in this world because of his liberal and secular philosophy that he believed and practiced. The philosophy that contradicted with the thinking of the religious extremists. He was killed by the jihadists who do not tolerate progressive thoughts or ideas.

Professor Khalid Hameed was the head of the Department of English of Government SE College, Bahawalpur, Pakistan. The College had organized an annual event to welcome the new students.  Khateeb Hussain, a 5th-semester student at the College, stabbed Professor Hameed after an argument over the gender mixing and a cultural dance as parts of the event. He said that such activities are against the teachings of Islam. Khateeb is a radicalized young man of 21 years. He has been attending the messages of the leaders of Tehreek Labbaik Ya Rasul Allah (TLYRA), an ultra-religious political party. TLYRA followers are religious extremists who ignited countrywide protests damaging the state and public properties against the Supreme Court’s decision acquitting Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman on death row for eight years falsely accused of blasphemy against Islam. Although acquitted of all charges by the most superior judicial courts of Pakistan, Aasiya Bibi is kept hidden from public under strict state security. The radical jihadists are on the hunt for her life. A religious edict (fatwa) is much more important to them than the Supreme Court’s verdict.

After completing his brutal and barbaric act, Khateeb Hussain, the murderer of Professor Hameed, holding his knife, raised both his hands in air, as if in victory, shouted at the top of his voice: “I have killed him, I had told him that a gender-mix reception is against Islam”. He said he did not have any regrets for what he has done. He felt satisfied that he had completed a religious and moral obligation.

This is not the first time that such a sad incident has happened. There have been several such cases where people were lynched because of religious differences. Junaid Hafeez, a brilliant scholar and professor of English literature at Bahaud Din Zakaria (BZU) University, Multan, Pakistan is languishing in jail for the past 5 years falsely accused of blasphemy against Islam. No lawyer was ready to defend his case for fear of the jihadists. A lawyer who took up his case was shot dead by radical jihadists in the lawyer’s office. In 2017, Mishal Khan, a student of Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan, Pakistan was killed by a mob of religious extremists on allegations of posting anti-Islamic material online. Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab was murdered by his radical security guard. Taseer’s only mistake was that he visited Aasia Bibi in jail to show his sympathy with her. Shahbaz Bhatti, the Federal Minister for Minorities, was gunned down in the capital city, Islamabad, Pakistan. Bhatti had the courage to raise his voice against the notorious Blasphemy Law of Pakistan. Naimat Ahmer, a Christian educationist of the Government of Punjab, Pakistan was shot dead in the office of the District Education Officer because he was trying to educate the poor students of the village where he was posted. Attacks, bombings, shootings and burning of churches, Ahmedia mosques, Christians’ villages and minority community’s festivals, forcible abductions, marriages and conversions of faith are few of the examples of persecution and oppression of vulnerable people in Pakistan.

“Recently, a government university in Punjab issued a dress code barring female students from wearing tops with a deep neckline, sleeveless shirts, tights, skinny jeans or capri pants” (Manila Bulletin, March 21, 2019).

I remember the three-week long sit-in protest by over 2500 workers of TLYRA was ended when the Government accepted their demands of not to amend the text of oath of the parliamentarians and state ministers. Instead, the protesters were paid cash rewards by Pakistan’s Military. This indicates the kind of message the state stakeholders send to radicals and extremists.

With the above-mentioned facts, the current socio-political scenario in Pakistan is very bleak and disappointing. The assassination of an educationist of noble character with liberal and secular ideas is a loud and clear message to all the intellectuals, educationists, state officials and civil society of the country to keep their ideas to themselves, not to meddle with the present religiously-coloured state’s curriculum and mind their own business. Anyone who raises voice against this status quo will face the fate of Professor Khalid Hameed.

Mumtaz Shah