Assassin is an Arabic Word

The world’s first assassins were Arab hashshashin, or “hashish-eaters”. They were fanatics of the Ismaili sect of Islam, and their purpose in life was to kill infidels, especially Christians, and anyone else who blasphemed against the prophet. They hashshashin had to get ripped on hash to work up the nerve for killing.

When the word was borrowed into French and Provençal, and thence into English, it lost the plural sense, and gave us the singular form “assassin”.

And it was an Islamic assassin — in the pure, original sense of the word — who murdered the governor of Punjab in Pakistan today. There’s no information on whether he had to get stoned to pull the trigger, but his motive was the traditional one: he assassinated Governor Salman Taseer for failing to follow the letter of Islamic law.

The governor’s crime was to protest the death sentence against Asia Bibi, the Christian woman who was sentenced for blaspheming Mohammed. Mr. Taseer had also spoken with approval of his expectation that the blasphemy law would soon be revised to reflect civilized norms of jurisprudence.

That was too much for one of the governor’s bodyguards, who gunned down his boss in the capital city of Pakistan. There’s no doubt who did it, or why: the assassin has admitted the crime, and said he did it because of Mr. Taseer’s position on the Bibi case.

As Vlad Tepes points out, this killing is a message to every political leader in the world, and not just Muslim ones: if you attempt to limit the scope of traditional sharia law, or even talk about doing so, you will die.

This is our future. The leaders of the most Islamized nations of the West are being put on notice: when there are enough Muslims in your countries, this is what you can expect. France first, then the UK and Sweden, then the Netherlands — with Geert Wilders being the number one target — and then eventually the rest of us.

Why do you think Muslims are offering to guard Coptic churches?

A more prudent choice of guardians may be warranted…

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Here’s a selection of articles about what happened, as well as a composite video. First, from The Times of India:

Pakistan: Punjab Governor Salman Taseer Killed by His Guard

ISLAMABAD: The governor of Pakistan’s powerful Punjab province was shot dead Tuesday by one of his guards in the Pakistani capital, apparently because he had spoken out against the country’s controversial blasphemy laws, officials said.

The killing of Salman Taseer was the most high-profile assassination of a political figure in Pakistan since the slaying of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007, and it rattled a country already dealing with crises ranging from a potential collapse of the government to Islamist militancy.

The suspected killer was taken into custody, and there were conflicting reports as to whether he was wounded.

Taseer was a member of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party and a close associate of President Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto’s widower. The governor was vocal on a range of subjects, and frequently used Twitter to get across his views.

In recent days, as the People’s Party has faced the loss of its coalition partners, the 56-year-old Taseer has insisted that the government will survive. But it was his stance against the blasphemy laws that apparently led to his killing.

Interior minister Rahman Malik told reporters that the suspect in the case had surrendered to police and told them he killed Taseer because “the governor described the blasphemy laws as a black law.”

“He was the most courageous voice after Benazir Bhutto on the rights of women and religious minorities,” said a crying Farahnaz Ispahani, an aide to Zardari and friend of Taseer. “God, we will miss him.”

Pakistan’s blasphemy law has come under greater scrutiny in recent days after a Christian woman was sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

Under pressure from Islamist parties, the People’s Party said recently it would not pursue changes to the law, which has long vexed human rights activists.

Police official Mohammad Iftikhar said Taseer was gunned down after he reached Khosar Market, a shopping center in Islamabad popular with Westerners and wealthy Pakistanis. Five other people were wounded as other security personnel responded to the attack.

Another police official, Hasan Iqbal, said a pair of witnesses told the police that as the governor was leaving his vehicle, a man from his security squad fired two shots at him. Taseer then fell, while other police officials fired on the attacker.

Taseer was believed to be meeting someone for a meal, Malik said. Other members of his security detail were being questioned, Malik said.

The security for Taseer was provided by the Punjab government. “We will see whether it was an individual act or someone had asked him” to do it, Malik said of the attacker.

Bullet casings and blood covered much of the scene at the market, and police quickly cordoned off the area.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for YouTubing this video from several sources:



From Asia News:

Pakistan: Punjab Governor Assassinated, He Had Called for Asia Bibi’s Pardon

Salman Taseer was killed by a member of his security detail. Interior minister says that the murderer acted because the governor had described the blasphemy law as a “black law”.

Islamabad (AsiaNews) – Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab, was assassinated today by a member of his security detail at a popular market in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. His assassin, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, said he killed him because the governor had described the blasphemy law as a “black law”.

Unlike other Pakistani leaders, Taseer had openly opposed the blasphemy law. He had recently called on President Zardari to grant a pardon to Asia Bibi, a Christian woman from Punjab sentenced to death after she was accused of blasphemy.

“He has confessed his crime and surrendered his gun to police after the attack,” Interior Minister Rahman Malik said about the assassin, explaining that he is a police officer from Rawalpindi and had been recently added to the governor’s staff. This was the third time he worked in the security detail.

President Zardari, Prime Minister Gilani and other political leaders condemned the murder. Various human rights groups expressed their gratitude to Taseer for his efforts towards the abolition of the blasphemy law and for his defence of Asia Bibi’s life.

And from AKI:

Pakistan: Punjab Governor Taseer ‘Assassinated by Own Security Staff’

Islamabad, 4 Jan. (AKI) — By Syed Saleem Shahzad — Pakistan’s Punjab provincial governor Salmaan Taseer was shot dead by a member of his own security staff on Tuesday at a market in an upscale neighbourhood in Islamabad, according to police.

The attacker, Malik Mumtaz Qadri, used an automatic weapon to shoot Taseer at close range as the 46-year-old member of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party was getting into his car after a visit to the Kohsar Market.

Qadri surrendered to police and confessed to the killing, saying he carried out the assassination because Taseer had sought clemency for a Christian Pakistani woman who has been sentenced to death for blasphemy in Punjab.

Asiya Bibi was jailed after an argument with some local Muslim women in a district near the provincial capital, Lahore. The women refused to drink water that Bibi had fetched because she was a Christian.

During a meeting with Taseer, Bibi entrusted her fight for pardon to the governor, who said he would convey the appeal to Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari.

Bibi, an agricultural worker and mother of five, is the first woman to be sentenced to death for blasphemy, according to human rights groups.

Taseer had said that Bibi was a poor woman who does not possess enough resources to defend herself. He expressed certainty that Zardari would grant her a pardon.

The slain governor was a leading moderate voice in the main ruling Pakistan People’s Party. The PPP-led government is teetering on the verge of collapse after losing its parliamentary majority when its junior coalition partner switched to the opposition on Sunday.



Hat tips: Vlad Tepes, C. Cantoni, and Insubria.

22 thoughts on “Assassin is an Arabic Word

  1. Mr. Taseer had also spoken with approval of his expectation that the blasphemy law would soon be revised to reflect civilized norms of jurisprudence.

    That was too much for one of the governor’s bodyguards, who gunned down his boss in the capital city of Pakistan.

    Gunned down by his own “bodyguard”.

    WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU?

    While my condolences go out to Governor Taseer’s surviving relatives, if he was really that enlightened, maybe he should have gotten the Hell out of Dodge.

    This is a pluperfect example of Islam’s Incessant Internecine Violence™, henceforth known as the IIIV™ or “Triple IV”.

    What better face for Muslims to show the world than that of a slightly moderate political leader, wishing to demonstrate a minuscule degree of modernity, getting offed by one of his innermost coterie?

    THIS IS ISLAM, FOLKS. IT DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER OR WORSE THAN THIS. CAPICHE?

  2. Truly, when the leaders of free peoples are more afraid than the leaders of enslaved peoples, then the wrong people are afraid.

    Until we get serious and the right people are afraid, the West will continue to be Islamicized until the entire world lives under Sharia Law – as is the stated goal of Islam.

  3. Exact same thing happened to Indira Ghandi: Gunned down by her own Sikh bodyguards after she ordered the storming of the Amritsar Temple, sacred to the Sikhs.

    Perhaps it time to revive the Varengian Guard. At least they didn’t off the people who payd them. 🙂

  4. Trusting a Muslim to be anything but a fanatic-in-waiting is a losing proposition.

    (Mikael– like your icon… GMTA = Great Minds Think Alike)

  5. Would we could take away Pocky-Stahn’s Nuclear toys and just let events take their course. The Mullahs would be inpower within a fortnight, stir up a war with India and hasten the end of the Pakistani State. Dr. Shalit

  6. I don’t know why the Muslim condemnation of violence against Copts and the offer to guard their churches is being greeted with such cynicism. Many Muslims oppose religious violence and are not able to make their voices heard for the same reason that Americans opposed to the Iraq war were not interviewed on Fox News. In both places, fanatics control the agenda. That does not mean that every American or every Muslim is a fanatic.

  7. @Jessica,

    Sorry to disillusion you, but any Muslim who takes the foundational religious texts of Islam seriously is a “fanatic” and is mandated to, at a minimum, support those who engage in jihad. Shariah law codifies these foundational texts and casts their doctrines in concrete. Shariah supports jihad, of course.

    According to the Koran and Shariah, Christians and Jews can occupy a special, 3rd class, or dhimmi status in Islamic society and will be “protected” as long as they follow the dhimmi rules and pay a special tax, the jizya. Egyptian Copts are being asked to pay the jizya in order to survive in their subordinate status.

    As I have written here before, there are many Muslims who do not take their religion seriously or are Muslims-in-name-only But one can never predict when they or their children will turn toward their religion in a more serious way. According to the Syrian-American psychologist Wafa Sultan (herself living under death threats), any Muslim who reads and takes seriously his religious texts will become “radicalized.” That is what the religios/political system known as Islam is–radical.

    Muslims have no psychological defense when the Imans or the Al Qaida recruiters tell them that they are not being good Muslims if they don’t engage in or at least support jihad (the violent or the stealth variety). That is because the theology, the history and the culture all support the “radicals.” Islam is radical. Get it?

    Until politcal correctness clamped down, American law enforcement agencies were complaining that they don’t get much support from within the Muslim community. Now, due to PC, they can’t even say that publicly. The Muslim community polices its own; those who are publicly out of line with the tenents of Islam risk being murdered, even in Western countries. Even the threat of social ostracism and social disapproval is enough to keep most would-be-dissenters in line. And of course women are very likely to be beaten and brutalized–much more so than in our culture. Violence is endemic in Muslim communities–much, much more so than in ours.

  8. @Jessica

    I’m sorry if I was too contentious. After all, how can you or any of us know? We can’t trust the mainstream media. We are all educating ourselves on this blog and others.

  9. Baron,

    Recently I watched a documentary on the influence of Islamic science on the West. The presenter(a Moslem physicist) mentioned the ‘scientific’ work of the Ismaili sect,but failed to point out that the Ismailis were the original ‘assassins’.
    They were the medieval equivalent of the modern suicide bomber as they were usually prepared to sacrifice themselves to the success of their mission.

    It’s an old Moslem tradition.

  10. Watcher wrote:

    As I have written here before, there are many Muslims who do not take their religion seriously or are Muslims-in-name-only But one can never predict when they or their children will turn toward their religion in a more serious way.

    Unfortunately, it’s worse than that: One can’t even predict who these purported “un-serious” Muslims or “Muslims-in-name-only” really are, or where they are. And given the high and horrific degree of danger which the dangerous Muslims are assiduously planning for us, I’m not prepared to play Muslim Roulette based upon a hypothesis that Muslims, sociologically and psychologically, must be approximately like our society.

    Nor do I wish our societies will continue to assume that friendly Muslims who smile, wear blue jeans on Casual Fridays and have Dave Brubeck on their ipods — and perhaps even have their all-American kids playing Little League, as did Maher Mofeid “Mike” Hawash — must ipso facto be harmless and therefore allowed access into the deep folds of our societies and institutions.

    Thus, such hypotheses are worthless.

    Indeed, they are potentially harmful for us, because they tend to reinforce the erroneous notion that we can tell the difference — at least in numbers sufficient for our #1 priority of protecting our societies from Muslims — between the dangerous Muslims and the harmful Muslims.

    The rational principle then would be to presume all Muslims to be equally dangerous, and to begin to modify our policies of self-defense accordingly.

    The Hesperado

  11. “I don’t know why the Muslim condemnation of violence against Copts and the offer to guard their churches is being greeted with such cynicism.”

    Let me tell you why, Jessica:

    Because they play a double game.

    Because it makes it easier for the soldiers of Allah to get to know their victims and to follow them home, where they can kill them whenever the jihad flares up.

    No, we must not be naive about this.

    The “moderates” read the same Koran.

    All are commanded to kill and die for Allah.

  12. sheik yer’mami,

    I should have pointed out that the Assassins were,originally, an Ismaili sect,probably most modern Ismailis would disown them.However I haven’t forgotten they’re Moslems,think of what’s happening in supposedly tolerant Indonesia.
    The Assassins, as an organization, were effectively destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century.

  13. @Hersperado

    I agree. Thanks for adding that.
    The full picture is so horrible that it is difficult for most people to believe. I have made the same points as I did in my comment and as you did in your comment in conversations with liberals–and their response, sometimes, is “It can’t be as bad as you say.”

    I tell them that it is as bad or worse. I suppose that those who tried to warn others about the Nazis during the 1930s faced a similar problem.

  14. I don’t intend to sound like I’m quibbling, but I found the formulation by Bodissey —

    They were fanatics of the Ismaili sect of Islam, and their purpose in life was to kill infidels, especially Christians, and anyone else who blasphemed against the prophet. They hashshashin had to get ripped on hash to work up the nerve for killing.

    — conveys (likely unintentionally) the notions that a) the nobility and desideratum of killing Infidels is not mainstream among Muslims; and that b) Muslims need anything (drugs or otherwise) to get up the nerve to kill Infidels. As we have learned from wikileaks of late, a staggering percentage of Afghanis are on opiates (including those we are recruiting and generously paying in order to buy their love and support). The rule of thumb whenever we encounter overturned rocks revealing glimpses into the socio- and psychopathology of Muslims is that this is likely the norm, not the exception. It is reasonable to assume, then, that the hashish use of the Hashashshashin was not (at least not primarily) for the purpose of preparing themselves for a duty they otherwise wouldn’t be avid to pursue (viz., killing Unbelievers), but simply reflects that curiously schizophrenic fusion of fanaticism and depravity which characterizes the Muslim psyche.

  15. Hesperado —

    You’re quite right, and please do feel free to “quibble”.

    Everything you said is true, as far as I know. However, I am constrained from unnecessary prolixity by the imperative for concision. As a result it is not always possible to include in any given discussion all the information contained within the penumbra of the topic in question. Hence I must assume the reader is shrewd enough to intuit the context which is not explicitly provided.

    Perhaps that is an unwise assumption, but there it is.

    As for the Assassins — they are described in the histories as an “Ismaili sect” with a peculiar propensity for hashish intoxication prior to committing murder.

    None of this excludes or ignores the well-known and overwhelmingly Muslim capacity for murder, torture, rape, looting, and general mayhem, with or without the influence of intoxicants, within all Islamic cultures and sects, in all eras, everywhere.

  16. Quote:
    The Assassins, as an organization, were effectively destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century.
    end quote.

    Which brings me to an often-ignored historical pattern.
    The most effective threats against Islam have never been waged from the Occidental West.
    Muslims bitch, moan, toss, turn and terrorize all over the West.
    They have never tried to wage the same campaign in Mongolia, China, Japan. Why?
    Because it was the Asian East that waged the most effective campaigns of destruction against Islam.
    And they could do it again.
    Easily.
    To change the mind of Islam about the West, we may have to be as destructive to everything Muslims deem sacred as the Mongols were in the 14th century.
    Only then will the West have a long lease on life.

  17. goethechosemercy,

    With regard to the statement that “The Assassins, as an organization, were effectively destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century”, you wrote:

    The most effective threats against Islam have never been waged from the Occidental West.

    Don’t miss the larger, actual, picture here. In ensuing centuries after the Mongols attacked this, that and the other Muslim area, Muslims grew in influence, power and geographical extent throughout Asia (with the exception of the Far East and North). Indeed, the Mongols eventually converted to Islam, because they recognized a kindred barbarism elevated to a higher plane of military valor, perhaps.

    There’s no need to go all Ghengis Khan (or “Berserker”) on Muslims to take care of the problems they are causing. All we have to do is recover our normative Western balls and brains, which are the gold standard of the opposite of barbaric.

    The Hesperado

  18. I have also been thinking about Trencherbone’s posts of the other day.
    It may be possible to carry out a campaign of contempt against Islam so unavoidable that Muslims have to show the worst that’s in them all the time.
    If the occasional shot of reality from the news isn’t enough, perhaps a harder shot of reality from the street will get Westerners moving against Islam.

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