Bhutto and Wanting Democracy What does liberty mean to you? To Benazir Bhutto liberty meant universal values that can be applied across cultures, societies, religions, ethnic groups and individual national experiences. Bhutto believed that democracy was a universal value. Bhutto was very compelling in all her arguments. She represented a powerful voice in favor of democracy in Pakistan. I found her to be admirable because she stood up for what she believed in even though she was almost killed by a suicide bomber; she continued to spread her word on democracy. She wanted to spread her idea of democracy but it was hard for her because General Zia was in control. He was a problem to Bhutto because he imprisoned her for more than six years. General Zia wanted to rule and not give people rights that they deserved including religion and politics. This was exploiting of religion because Islam and the government were corrupted. All but three of the Nations in Islam were considered “free”. The other nations could not be completely free because their government didn’t give them the right to fair elections. In order to be completely free the government was to be selected by reasonably fair elections most of the Nations did not have this power. The dictators used the Quran or the book of god and killed innocent people and were corrupt because they didn’t give people all the rights they truly deserved like for example, the right to elect their leaders. The extremist believed that if you believed in separation of church and state it was secular, which could also mean atheist or rejection of god. They saw how the west was not concerned about the inappropriate displays on television. For example, the television could be turned on and the first channel would be people intoxicated. Islam saw this and they said we have to be stricter because we don’t want our nations or country to follow that example. The terrorist did a lot of perverting their religion because they killed a lot of innocent people. Islam has been manipulated for political reasons by militants and extremist or dictators too many times. Bhutto was also compelling because her whole life was hard and she got through the difficulty of it, she didn’t stop trying. She dealt with the death of her father, her brother being poisoned, exiled, and locked up for years in the worst prisons there was. An average person would have been torn but Bhutto despite the fact that she was suffering she continued to try to spread democracy and she still gave her talks. She was threatened and almost killed at one time and this is also admirable because she was still determined to spread democracy regardless of the consequences. One thing that lacked was that the Western support made it difficult, if not impossible to set up a democracy in Islam. The West supported dictators who have made a point in giving the West access to oil and other important resources. By doing this the West tolerates despotism and deprivation of rights in the countries whose resources it needs. They did support some Freedom Houses that are supposed to support or promote