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Slain Pak minister a martyr, says Archbishop

08 March 2011 03:16 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. The Archbishop of Canterbury has called the assassinated Pakistan minister for minorities Shahbaz Bhatti a ’martyr’ and asked the government of Pakistan to do more to protect its minorities, APA reports quoting â€œHindustan Timesâ€.

Writing in The Times on Monday, Dr Rowan Williams said the murder of Pakistan’s only Christian cabinet minister, cannot be "managed or tolerated".
Bhatti died "for all practical purposes as a martyr," wrote Dr Williams, and added: "Not simply for his Christian faith, but for a vision shared between Pakistani Christians and Muslims."
Bhatti was killed in an ambush by gunmen as he drove away from his mother’s home.
Williams said Bhatti was a martyr and Pakistan was being blackmailed by extremists.
Williams also attacked in his article the country’s controversial blasphemy laws that were also criticised by Bhatti.
Williams wrote: "Part of the problem is the weakening of properly traditional Islam by the populist illiteracies of modern extremism."
Those who supported Mr Bhatti’s killing, said the Archbishop, "inhabit a world of fantasy, shot through with paranoid anxiety."
Williams claimed there was a faction in Pakistan "wholly uninterested in justice and due process of law, concerned only with promoting an inhuman pseudo-religious tyranny."
The Archbishop called for a debate in Pakistan about the blasphemy laws, because "part of the problem is the weakening of properly traditional Islam by the populist illiteracies of modern extremism."