I have made numerous suggestions to successive governments both to ameliorate the force of these laws and to replace them with something more humane. No government, so far, has had the courage to do anything. This is partly because of the fear of extremists but it is also because there has been, as a senior minister once told me, a change in the mindset of a large segment of the population which has been brought up on the teaching of hatred in textbooks and on ultra-fundamentalist notions about Islam, its Prophet and its laws.

Like other countries, Pakistan has a choice: to sink more and more into an obscurantist Islamism, with all that means for women, religious minorities and even Muslims of traditions different from Wahhabism and Salafism, or to return to the vision of its founders. They did not want to create a theocratic state but one where Islam would inspire the creation of a free, just and compassionate society. As someone who, along with many others, resisted the wrong turn taken 40 years ago, I can only pray that even now the nation will turn back from the brink to which this turning has led it and embark again on the path laid out for it by those who brought it into existence. 

To the west, the new regime in Egypt has certainly acted disproportionately in its suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood and in its treatment of a number of journalists. We cannot, however, underestimate the peril that Egypt was facing from an extremist Islamism being imposed on an unwilling population. The massive demonstrations in favour of change have been confirmed by the recent presidential elections. I was in the country at the time they were held and it seemed to me that, in spite of reservations, Egypt was now more settled in terms of its future direction. 

In an interview on Sky Arabia, President Sisi emphasised a nationalist vision which saw religion as important for society but understood it in an inclusive way. Christians, the media and the intelligentsia are euphoric about what has happened. Some of them are looking forward to one law for all, common citizenship and equality before the law. In some respects, they will have to come down to earth. No government can fail to take note of a strong Islamist element in the population and this will continue to influence policy on, for example, the building of churches, the treatment of converts and the freedom of the press. For instance, although the government has eased restrictions on the building of churches, extremists still try and prevent them being built or extended with the threat of violence.

Egypt has, however, taken a turn which countries like Pakistan need to note and, if not to emulate, at least one from which they can learn valuable lessons for themselves.