EVERY year the British government honours some of its citizens who have excelled in their chosen fields of professional endeavour. It could be any one of a variety of pursuits — scholarship in arts and sciences, creative writing, music, theatre, sports, public service, politics, and diplomacy among others.

Titles are awarded as tokens of recognition. The government of Pakistan, as well as many others, does the same.

One of the British citizens honoured this year, and awarded a knighthood, happens to be Salman Rushdie, author of many novels, including one called ‘The Satanic Verses’, published nearly 20 years ago. It contained some unflattering references to our Prophet (PBUH), and anguished Muslims across the world. Many of them condemned Mr Rushdie and his book, and Ayatollah Khomeini, supreme head of the Iranian government at the time, announced a reward for anyone who would go out and kill him. The Ayatollah’s offer was, in turn, denounced by western governments and opinion makers.

The issue remained alive for a couple of years, but then it subsided and, if my remembrance is right, the Iranian government eventually withdrew its earlier pronouncement of the death sentence against Mr Rushdie and the offer of a reward for his killer.The British government’s award to Mr Rushdie has incensed, indeed infuriated, Muslims in Pakistan. Thousands of them have come out on the streets to vent their anger. They have been denouncing not only him for what he had written (even if 20 years ago) but also Tony Blair and his government. “Death to Britain,” they have shouted and burned effigies of Elizabeth II, the Queen, beloved of the English people and by all reckonings a great lady.

The protesters believe that the British government has conferred knighthood on Salman Rushdie in spite of the fact, which they should have remembered, that he had once greatly antagonised the global Muslim community. They feel the British act of honouring Rushdie is to be taken to mean that they have joined him in insulting the Prophet of Islam.

This reasoning is not entirely convincing. It is one-sided, and there is more to this matter than it covers. Mr Rushdie is not a historian or an academic scholar. He is a novelist, a story-teller. He is not in the business of reporting events as they have happened. He imagines events and the persons who make them. He writes fiction.

It may be said, and justifiably so, that he should not have spoken of the Prophet mockingly even in a work of fiction, knowing as he surely did that Muslims revere and love him. But he did, and in doing so he made fun of them and played with their feelings. But it is one thing to condemn his folly and impertinence and quite another to condemn Tony Blair and his queen.

Turning now to the other side’s case, it should first be noted that rarely, if ever, does a government honour a citizen on the basis of only one single work of his. Normally, the entire span of his accomplishments is taken as a whole and assessed. ‘The Satanic Verses’ is the fourth of Mr Rushdie’s nearly 40 works. Some of them will be found more engaging than others. I read one of his earlier novels, ‘Midnight’s Children’, and liked it. But I had a hard time with another one, called ‘Shame’. I confess that I have never read ‘The Satanic Verses’, but I gather that it was a very tedious piece of writing, difficult to read and not enjoyable.

Mr Rushdie does not have much of a readership in any Muslim country, and it may be a fair assumption that not even one in a 100 of those who are out condemning him on the streets has read any of his novels. In any case, there is no reason to think that ‘The Satanic Verses’ figured prominently in the calculations of those who evaluated his work and recommended the award of knighthood to him.

Second, it is not the normal practice of governments, with the possible exception of our own and perhaps a few others, to consider how their domestic policies and actions will be received in other countries. Foreign reactions, especially the American and European, may have a bearing on Pakistan’s disposition of issues such as the fairness of elections and General Musharraf’s retention of his army post. But the chief minister of Punjab does not worry about foreign reactions when he decides that kites may be flown in Lahore on certain days or when he settles the weightier issue of financial allocation to primary education in the province.

Equally certain we may be that the government of Pakistan gave no thought to foreign reaction when it decided to honour Ahmad Faraz, a distinguished poet, and awarded him a “Sitara,” even though he has all along been a harsh critic of western policies towards the Third World. Why then do we feel entitled to condemn the British government for its failing to consider our possible reaction to its honouring of Salman Rushdie?

Considering that we have always stood for non-intervention in the internal affairs of other nations, can it then not be said that the action in question was the British government’s internal affair, that it was, and is, none of our business, and that we should therefore stay out of it?

Great Britain is for the most part a Protestant Christian country. Officially the queen is head of the Church of England and “defender of the faith” But actually neither she nor any of her predecessors during the last couple of centuries has done anything to defend it. Neither the government nor the people of Great Britain feel passionately about their religious doctrine or personalities. A blasphemy law is tucked away in the statute book, but it has not been enforced for almost a 100 years. One may criticise, even ridicule, any aspect of the Christian faith and the government will take no notice of such speech or writing.

British Catholics reject Protestantism and the Jews reject all of Christianity. Yet many Catholics and Jews have been awarded knighthood and even higher titles. At least one British Muslim sits in the House of Lords. If this is how they feel about their own religion, how can we expect them to have developed the kind of sensitivity about Islam and its heroes that we do?

We say the British have hurt our feeling. Our crowds have been insulting their queen and country. Going by our own logic, we should assume that our slogans have hurt their feelings. How would we feel if they came out on the streets of London, shouted anti-Pakistan slogans, and denigrated Mr Jinnah, the founder of our state? Badly, I am sure. Fortunately, it so happens that their feelings are not as raw as ours.

Christians believe that Jesus was the son of God. They also believe in his resurrection after he had been lifted from the stake. Muslims say, no, he was not the son of God, and that the reports of his resurrection are false. Christians may view our rejection of their most fundamental doctrine as an attempt to belittle their Lord, and one that is intended to hurt their feelings. Nor should we be surprised if they mounted retaliatory movements against us. At the instigation of the popes in Rome, their knights and soldiers did fight crusades against Muslims in Palestine, but their object was to take Jerusalem, not to change Muslim beliefs about Jesus.

Hindus believe that their Lord Krishna was divine. He is often portrayed as surrounded by a whole bunch of young women (“Gopies”) and dancing with them. Muslims reject the claims of divinity for him, and many of them think he was inclined to be excessively romantic. Hindus might regard these Muslim assessments as an insult to their religion. Lucky for us that they do not think much of us or our views.

They have fought wars with us to consolidate their control over Kashmir, but not to change our views of Krishna. It is true that some Hindu extremists hope to change the Indian Muslims’ views by converting them to Hinduism, but note that we condemn their efforts on this front.

Following Ayatollah Khomeini’s example, the president of a traders’ association in Lahore and the imam of a mosque in Peshawar (whom you would not expect to have a lot of money) have each offered a reward of one million dollars to anyone who will kill Mr Rushdie. The speaker of the Punjab Assembly says he will personally kill Mr Rushdie if the latter is reckless enough to appear before him.

These declarations of intent to have a British citizen murdered are simply incredible. I wonder how the government of Pakistan will respond if the British government demands the extradition of these would-be murderers.

The protesters’ feelings are said to have been hurt because someone had belittled the Prophet, whom they claim to love intensely. Theirs is indeed an unusual way of loving. Normally when you love a person you do what he or she asks you to do. The protesters are ready to die in defending the Prophet’s good name but they will not heed his counsel in the conduct of their day-to-day living. They will kill anyone who detracts from his exalted status but, other than praying and fasting (if that), they will not do what he had asked them to do.

He asked them to speak the truth, be honest in their transactions, keep their word and fulfil their covenants, work hard and do their duty diligently, be punctual, avoid speculative buying and selling and all unearned income, refrain from accumulation of wealth and from conspicuous consumption, be solicitous of their neighbour’s well-being, to mention but a few. The vast majority of Muslims in Pakistan, and many other places, do not do any of these things. In their actual practice they disregard most of the Prophet’s injunctions, his lifestyle and personal conduct. And yet they claim to love him.

WHEN a minister speaks in public or to the press the people are never sure whether he is speaking for himself or for the government. Strangely enough, that is true also of the president of Pakistan.

When Gen Musharraf says, and he is never tired of saying it, that he is committed to fighting the extremists and militants to the finish, the people take it that the commitment, if at all, is personal and not of his government.

Luckily, not many from among a lot of 77 or so ministers ever speak. Those few who do only damage the credibility of the government and, on occasion, provide comic relief to the people. The majority does well not to speak, for those who do confuse or contradict rather than clarify.

Just days after the prime minister had categorically stated in parliament that the assemblies would complete their term and elections would be held no earlier than scheduled and, further, that the present assemblies would elect the president, this is what his party chief, Chaudhry Shujaat Husain, had to say: the government retains the option to dissolve the assemblies earlier or to extend their term for a year. “Politics,” he is quoted to have said, “is like a game of cards in which sometimes you have to bluff.”

All that one can say on this score is that the people have been ‘bluffed’ long enough to lose faith in the politics of the government and of the opposition, and also of those in between who are in league with one or the other.

Then, the majority leader in the Senate, Mr Wasim Sajjad, is reported to have said that dissolution was still an option. According to the parliamentary affairs minister, Sher Afgan, it was not. No one should be dismissed lightly.

In a typical parliamentary system, the advice of the prime minister on the dissolution or extension of the parliament is binding on the head of state. In a hybrid of the parliamentary and presidential forms that is in vogue here, the president can go by his own judgment or by the advice of any of the party leaders or military commanders. The result is agonising uncertainty which the people have been experiencing in ample measure since long.

Then steps in that master of innuendo and double speak, Sheikh Rashid, the railway minister, to tell the people through a plaintive TV compere that Benazir Bhutto would ultimately do what the ruling coalition wanted her to do and yet save her own face (and apparently the public stance of her party) as well.

Thus, without contradicting Musharraf who had said only a day earlier that no deal was being made with the PPP, Sheikh Rashid has all but confirmed that it is in the making. What Sheikh Rashid has said would certainly please Musharraf, and Benazir, too, would find it awkward to refute it.

It is the growing prospect of an electoral understanding with the PPP which seems to have persuaded Sheikh Rashid to say in the same interview, with a measure of gusto, that the country will be shaken to its foundations if the forthcoming elections are rigged. By insisting in the same breath that Musharraf must get elected first by the present assemblies he has kept open the rigging option.If an electoral arrangement with the PPP is really in the offing it would be Musharraf’s first effort to align himself and his regime with moderates in politics which most people at present surrounding him are certainly not. Minister Ejazul Haq justifying suicide bombing (hopefully a gaffe) on Salman Rushdi’s knighthood, Higher Education Commission chairman Dr Atta-ur-Rehman, despite being the country’s lone FRS, sponsoring the apostasy bill (the bill seeks death penalty for Muslims who renounce the Islamic faith) and then the enraged Punjab assembly speaker Afzal Sahi eager to kill the blasphemers if he were to come across one — all go to show the presence of the partisans of the extremists in Musharraf’s chosen cadres.

Musharraf’s inability or unwillingness to resist such devotional onslaughts is further borne out by the dismissal of Nilofar Bakhtiar, one of the few proactive and charming ministers in Shaukat Aziz’s cabinet, for an act to which only her husband could have taken exception. The male ministers have been getting away with behaviour more reprehensible.

In the coming few months, the country is faced with the harrowing prospects of sliding into chaos or passing under martial law or, euphemistically, the president’s rule backed by the armed forces. The elements joining hands to force Musharraf out are heterogeneous. So are the people wishing to see him elected in October so that they could get into the parliament once again riding on his coattails.

The obvious expectation of Musharraf’s supporters is that with him installed in office the outcome of the general elections could be no different than it was in 2002 or in the by-elections that followed. But they hide behind the constitutional amendment which requires the president to get elected before the general elections knowing fully well that the religious parties who collaborated with the government to bring about that amendment would now be too willing to undo it.

The reality that Musharraf’s supporters must face is that their election scheme being farcical would inevitably lead to boycotts and chaos. At the same time, the harder reality that the parties opposing Musharraf must not overlook is that even if they are able to dislodge him through agitation the succeeding dispensation would be even more authoritarian.

Whether the next government is born of manipulated ballot or is backed by the army, the surge in militancy and extremism is bound to escalate. It should be a prospect as worrying for the religious groups as for the mainstream liberal parties or the nationalists on the fringes who are militants in their own way.

Consider the marauding lashkars operating in the Frontier regions and their Hafsa-Faridia outpost of 10,000 defiant men and women in Islamabad. They are eroding the influence of the Islamic political parties as much as the authority of the government of enlightened moderation.

Musharraf keeps exhorting the people not to surrender to the extremists. They haven’t, he has. The forces that can contain and defeat the extremists are the liberals, nationalists, regionalists, human rights activists, leftists, minorities, professionals, intellectuals, civil servants — you name any class other than the clerics. For seven years, all of them have been on the run, in hiding or, those who are luckier, sidelined.

Looming chaos, or a tougher military rule, can be averted if Musharraf confines himself to the constitutional role of the head of state, and does not bar some politicians and civil society from participating in elections. Any government emerging from elections fairly conducted with all voters registered should be able to roll back the tide of extremism which the yesmen, spies and closet clerics could not in seven years. Islamabad today would not have been a hostage to a madressah if it did so.

The core of Pakistan’s politics may be feudal but assuredly it is not parochial. It is Musharraf’s own administration that is riddled with extremists and their clones.