Writing in the Spectator, Shiraz Maher suggests (correctly, surely) that most people are unlikely to have heard about Pakistan’s contribution to the discovery of the Higgs Boson, and explains why that is just fine with Pakistan:
Dr Abdus Salam, a theoretical physicist, carried out pioneering work in the 1960s to suggest the existence of a hypothetical particle after creating a grand unification theory for weak forces and electromagnetic fields. He won the Nobel Prize in 1979 for his efforts, the only Pakistani to have ever received the honour. Yet, his name is largely airbrushed from textbooks in Pakistan and is rarely mentioned in public debate. The problem is that he belongs to the Ahmadi sect, a branch of Islam which is officially regarded as heretical by the Pakistani state and which is constitutionally discriminated against. Ahmadis cannot call themselves Muslim or build mosques, and are frequently the victims of violent attack.
After Salam died and was buried in the Punjab his headstone recorded his legacy as: ‘the first Muslim Nobel Laureate’. The word ‘Muslim’ has since been forcibly scrubbed out.
A pioneering scientist celebrated by theoretical physicists, Salam is a source of shame and embarrassment to Pakistan. That clash, between open inquiry and endeavour on the one hand, and the strictures of religious fundamentalism on the other, is a metaphor perfectly capturing the struggle which now engulfs Pakistan.
Why don’t they just call him by his native town or region or just Pakistani? Why does his epitaph have to refer to his religion? I know a bunch of my forebears were Christians but there is no mention of it on their gravestones. It just says mother or wife or beloved daughter or some such.