Politics can often be reduced into an ugly spectacle. In India, the votaries of Hindutva have been doing strange things in the name of religion and calling it faith.
In distant America, Donald Trump and his fervent band of supporters are busily engaged in upending the values which have for centuries served as a message of enlightenment for people all across the world. In Turkey, a buoyant Recep Tayyip Erdogan does everything he can to accumulate as much power as he can, pushing democracy into the roadside ditch as he does so.
And now we have Pakistan's Imran Khan telling voters in his country that he supports the blasphemy laws which have already taken the lives of a number of people at the hands of fanatical Muslims.
Christians and Ahmadiyyas have lost their lives, thanks to laws put in place by General Ziaul Haq in the 1980s.Now, in order to gain the electoral support of Pakistan's citizens at the upcoming election on 25 July, Imran Khan is simply pandering to the masses. He is playing to the gallery, which is not healthy for a country as wobbly as Pakistan on the scales of democracy.
Pakistan's blasphemy laws have regularly come under severe criticism around the world, but with a putatively modern politician like Imran Khan now touting the value of laws which discriminate against faiths not his own,politics in Pakistan takes an uglier turn.
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