THE assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer has unleashed a torrent of commentary about the decline of society, and rightly so. The story of the latest political figure killed at the hands of an extremist, though, has a twist to it: Mr Taseer broke no law, temporal or spiritual, but was instead killed for questioning a law. That unprecedented motive for an assassination ought to be reflected on. The country appears to have lurched to the conservative right even further and more abruptly than ever before in recent years. Consider that when Gen Musharraf (retd) attempted to revisit the issue of the blasphemy laws, he quickly had to back down and was only able to make some procedural changes. But just those few short years ago the level of vitriol and anger the Musharraf-led effort stirred up was nothing in comparison to what has been on display since the conviction of the Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, for blasphemy late last year. Clearly, the forces of extremism are on the march like never before and they are determined to bully and threaten people, with death even, to push them out of the public discourse.

Yet, this is not just an issue about social and religious conservatives versus liberals competing to define Pakistan. The fact of the matter is, increasingly even moderates are being shouted down and bullied out of the public space. Moderates coming from the conservative right who dare to pronounce that man-made laws are always open to scrutiny and revision have been threatened. Those espousing interpretations of Islam that are removed from the literalist, narrow interpretations of ultra-conservatives and extremists have been killed. The war to define Pakistan is not just being fought between the 'liberal' and 'conservative', but between the ultra-conservatives and everyone else, liberal, moderate and even mildly conservative.

What truly makes the societal war so frightening is the fertile ground the extremists have to plant their millenarian ideology. Mr Taseer's killer may have been an 'elite' policeman, but the educational system and cultural environment in which he grew up likely never equipped him with the tools to rationally reject the poison flowing in the milieu in which he lived and worked. As long as the state ostensibly fights extremism without even a semblance of a counter-extremism strategy, more tragic deaths like that of Governor Taseer's may be inevitable. Punishing those who incite violence would only be a starting point. The shameful heroic reception accorded to Mr Taseer's killer indicates how complex the task is, how deep-rooted the problem has become. Truly, we are at war with ourselves. And at the moment, it looks like the extremists are winning.