As the 26-year-old assassin, Malik Mumtaz Qadri, appeared before a magistrate in Islamabad, to be charged with murder and terrorism, he was showered by hundreds of supporters with rose petals and garlands. Moderate religious leaders refused to condemn the assassination, and some hard-line religious leaders appeared obliquely to condone the attack.
Meanwhile, thousands of mourners thronged to the funeral in Lahore of the governor, Salman Taseer, a prominent voice for secularism who had recently become the focus of religious fury for speaking out against the nation’s strict blasphemy laws.
Many of the nation’s top politicians, including Mr. Taseer’s chief rival in Punjab and the leader of the opposition, Nawaz Sharif, did not attend the services. Neither did President Asif Ali Zardari, a friend and ally of Mr. Taseer, but out concern for his own security.
Government ministers and party officials indicated that they were dropping the campaign to change the blasphemy laws that Mr. Taseer had championed. No senior official would be drawn to comment on the religious extremist aspect of the killing at the funeral. Those who did comment, indicated a shift in the government position, by suggesting the killing was a political murder and a conspiracy, rather than a religiously motivated attack.
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureishi avoided all comment and merely expressed his condolences to the family when approached by journalists. The Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, went as far as to say he would shoot any blasphemer himself.
“We have a very, very severe polarization in the country,” said journalist and author Ahmed Rashid, an expert on the Taliban and radical Islamism. “We have a small minority of extremists and small number of liberals speaking out, but the very large silent majority are people who are not extremist in any way but are not speaking out.”
Yet as the economic, political and social problems mount and extremism spreads, there is no sign of leadership from the government, he complained.
The Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who did attend the funeral, was described by one national daily newspaper as “rushing from pillar to post” in his frantic efforts to keep his government from collapsing after two coalition partners withdrew from his government last weekend.
Certainly the assassination has thrown the government off balance while the religious right, as the conservative and religious parties are generally described, remains unabashed in its open loathing of Mr. Taseer and his opposition to Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws, for which, apparently, he was killed.
The assassin, Mr. Qadri, hails from Bhara Kahu, a suburb of Islamabad, currently lives with his family in Muslim Town, a neighborhood of Rawalpindi, the military garrison town adjacent to Islamabad.
A follower of Dawat-e-Islami, a religious party based in Karachi, Mr. Qadri had joined the Special Forces branch of the Punjab police in 2002. At that time, he was declared a security risk because of his extreme religious views and sectarian activities during a routine check by his superior, according to a senior Pakistani police official.
In 2008, Mr. Qadri nonetheless managed to join the Elite Force of Punjab police, and had been assigned to guard the governor, raising alarming questions about the vetting and screening of security personnel, former police officials and associates of the former governor said.
At a market in Islamabad on Tuesday, Mr. Qadri pumped more than 20 rounds into Mr. Taseer’s back, Pakistani media reported, and yet was not fired on by any other member of the security detail, raising still more questions about whether any of the others knew of his plans in advance.
Mr. Qadri immediately surrendered, called himself a “slave of the Prophet,” and indicated that he had killed Mr. Taseer for his campaign against the blasphemy law.
He has so far not been linked him to any extremist religious organization, the senior police official said. But investigators were still combing his phone records and personal belongings. They are questioning his five brothers and father. Five other police officers who served with him are also under detention, the official said.
In contrast to the muted response of Mr. Taseer’s mourners, the supporters of Mr. Qadri were boisterous Wednesday. Lawyers who campaigned so vociferously two years ago against the military dictator Pervez Musharraf in the name of the constitution and the rule of law were among those who feted the suspect when he arrived at court Wednesday. Some volunteered to defend him free of charge.
Others voiced support Tuesday on an impromptu Facebook page for Mr. Qadri before it was forcibly shut down.
A former cabinet minister and leading member of the 2007 lawyers’ movement, Athar Minallah, said only a few extremists within the legal community would really support the killing of Mr. Taseer.
“Among the 100,000 lawyers in Pakistan, less than half a percent would go out and throw petals on this criminal, but the rest are hostages because the government is not providing any security, and why should I risk my life and that of my family,” he said. He pointed out that the religious parties have never done well at the polls and that the voting public, when given the chance, do not choose extremism.
Yet blasphemy is such an emotive subject in Pakistan that the day after such a high-profile murder, many seemed to side with the murderer, possibly for fear of being accused themselves.
Maulana Fazalur Rehman, the leader of Jamiat Ulema Islam-Fazal, a Deobandi religious party, which left the federal cabinet last month, seemed to issue a veiled warning to supporters of Mr. Taseer, saying that sympathizing with a blasphemer was just as extreme as blasphemy itself.
More than 500 religious leaders of Jamaat-e-Ahl-e-Sunnat, a leading Barelvi religious party, forbade its followers to either pray or attend the funeral prayers for Mr. Taseer, reported Jang, the country’s leading Urdu newspaper in its Wednesday issue.
“No Muslim should attend the funeral or even try to pray for Salman Taseer or even express any kind of regret or sympathy over the incident,” read a statement attributed to the religious clerics.
In Lahore, Muhammad Ibrahim, 25, a recent graduate who owns his own shop, was typical of ordinary citizens who did not condemn the assassin. “We are Muslims and nobody can compromise on the dignity of the Prophet,” he said. “Salman Taseer crossed the limits,” he said.
Half a dozen policemen interviewed while on duty around the city of Lahore voiced support for the assassin or refused to condemn the murder. “He acted according to his conscience,” one said. “What is done is Allah’s will,” another said. The policemen spoke to a journalist without giving their names.
Still, scores of workers from Mr. Taseer’s Pakistan Peoples Party were not able to gain access to the funeral ground because of the tight security and big crowds. Even the prime minister was unable to reach the coffin to say his goodbyes because of the press of people. The large black coffin, draped with the Pakistani flag, was carried by military helicopter to the nearby graveyard.
Party workers chanted slogans in memory of the party’s founder and amid some emotional grieving blamed the opposition Punjab government for failing to provide adequate security to the governor.
Sajida Amir, a provincial assembly member from Pakistan Peoples Party, the nation’s most secular-leaning, said the party had always made sacrifices for democracy. “The mission will continue and we will continue to speak out on these things,” she said.
Waqar Gillani contributed reporting from Lahore and Salman Masood from Islamabad.
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