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A. The Realist Paradigm *80

A realist would argue that Pakistan's anti-blasphemy laws target only about 5% of Pakistan's total population. These laws were enacted by democratically elected officials in the National Assembly and are wholly constitutional. The majority of Pakistan's people seemingly favor a system of Shari'a and deem Ahmadis as non-Muslims. The United States, or any nation, should therefore treat the persecution of Ahmadis no differently than other human rights concerns around the Islamic world, that is, as a minor problem relative to the concern of maintaining the balance of power among Muslim states. Considerable deference must be paid to the central authority in Pakistan, namely President Musharraf and his appointed cabinet and justices. By intervening on behalf of oppressed religious minorities in Pakistan, some have argued, the international community would not only be violating the sovereignty of Pakistan, but also disrupting its delicate and crucial partnership in the war on terrorism.

Pakistan has endorsed only the UDHR, which is a mere moral affirmation of universal rights and has no binding force. The ICCPR, in contrast, is binding on its signatories, which does not include Pakistan. Pakistan has asserted its preference for the Shari'a by not endorsing the U.N. Declaration of 1981 and by justifying its anti-blasphemy provisions under the Cairo Declaration. A young and unstable country like Pakistan should not bind itself by the whims of its founding fathers, whose mandate was short-lived. To undermine the strictures of the Shari'a with an international referendum to repeal the anti-blasphemy laws would damage Pakistan's political and legal machinery, perhaps leading to the increase of violence along its borders. Such a referendum would also fail to account for the fact that Pakistan, since October 1999, and until only recently, has been essentially a military regime that solves its problems, particularly the Kashmir dispute, through military means.

The persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan can be resolved via political means, not legal ones. To hold Pakistan to international customary human rights law as it relates to its anti-blasphemy laws is an impractical and futile pursuit because political treatment of religious dissidents is what drives the legitimacy of such laws. Rather than dealing with individual political actors within Pakistan, a more manageable approach would be to treat the nation as a unitary political actor, whose internal political insurrections are not the concern of the international community, particularly not of Western, liberal nations. Of greater concern is who controls Pakistan's central authority, how best to deal with that authority, and how to preserve Pakistan's powerful alliance with the West against other, more volatile, Muslim states in the region and the world.

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Considered the dominant approach to international relations theory, the realist paradigm identifies the state as the only crucial actor in international politics. International norms reflect power relations among states, and a state's given policy is driven by its relative gains to other states. The essential goal of a state is to survive by maintaining or enhancing its own power. See ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER, INTERNATIONAL LAW AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 9 - 14 (2000).