Extra helping of zaniness here, though. He was disagreeing with the interpretation that made the law, he wasn't himself doing the blaspheming. Gets the death penality anyways. Super twisted thinking, not just your average fundie stuff.

Death to those who disagree

By Syed Saleem Shahzad, Jan. 7

ISLAMABAD -

The right to disagree

 ....Muslim history is full of events over which learned people have given controversial opinions. Their views were rejected by the majority of Muslim jurists and scholars, but they were not condemned to death.....

Deafening silence
Taseer's murder has been widely applauded by rightwing elements, whose views appear to be politically motivated rather than driven by any ideology. Further, the secular and liberal majority of the country has mostly been silent, and the government too has not said a word against those who have openly lauded Taseer's killing.

Some lawyers showered the confessed killer - security guard Malik Mumtaz Qadri - with rose petals when he arrived at court on Wednesday, and an influential Muslim scholars group praised the assassination of a person who dared oppose a law that orders death for those who insult Islam.

"Whoever killed him [Taseer] is a pious man and will go directly to heaven," a former parliamentarian and the leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Asadullah Bhutto, said soon after news of the killing broke.

Haji Hanif Tayyab, a former federal minister, commented on a television channel, "Whoever loves the Prophet shouldn't be saddened by Taseer's death."....

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA07Df04.html

Seems tied up with some kind of warped nationalist concept where a lot of people don't want to participate in fundamentalism but still want same enshrined in their government, or something....it's almost like they are the ones blaspheming the prophet. And I don't mean that in the simple sense of disobeying his instructions, I mean it more in the sense of "we're a Muslim state, we got to make sure and stay that way by having these traditional laws." Seems cultural, not religious, what's going on, i.e., Christians etc. who don't know their place and get uppity in this state are the enemy, and anyone looking to give them a break are just as much the enemy. And it's interesting that some Shia , Sufi, and Sunni there are uniting on this. And a lof of people are quiet.

yep on the kidz these daze. say it ain't so jameel!

I'm not so sure it's all love of fundamentalism tho, mebbe they want some fundie stuff on a symbolic level, especially if its something like a law that keeps religious minorities down under your the heel of yo powerful muslimhood as it were. You know, like Jim Crow--separate but equal but er, at the same time we are clearly better than you so we agree to use our laws. It's like: muslimhood rocks unless they are coming after me?