I couldn’t bring myself to write my column last week because of the rage I felt at our Government for censoring the Internet. It wasn’t that blocking Facebook or YouTube had brought life to an end but the sheer stupidity of the exercise coupled with the wider implications of censorship for the citizens of this country threw me into a funk. I decided to take a week, breathe, and write something when I was calmer. Then Friday happened and 80 Ahmadi worshippers were killed and 120 injured at two mosques in Lahore as they offered their prayers. The TTP or the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility. The PML-N which has denied the existence of terrorist hotbeds in Southern Punjab better wake up from its slumber and do something about them.
Since 2001, 30,000 Pakistani civilians and armed forces personnel have been killed due to terrorist attacks and operations against terrorists – the heaviest price paid by any nation. Yet we collectively remain in denial about the nature of the very home-grown threat Pakistan faces today. Conspiracy theorists, half-baked “analysts”, the right wing press, and more dangerously politicians within Pakistan continue to perpetuate the “hidden hand” theories along with the “RAW-CIA-MOSSAD” nexus as reasons for these terrorist attacks and threats. Rational people will froth at the mouth as they spew off the numerous threats to Pakistan’s very existence. Sure, some of these theories are based on facts, and Pakistan over its last 60 odd years has made some international and regional enemies but these have been a result of the foreign policy we have chosen to pursue. If anyone thinks that the Pakistani State is a defenseless lamb they better think again. You reap what you sow, and we have sown the seeds of terror that have come back to haunt and kill us. Zia-ul-Haq’s children have turned on their masters. It’s official and if you’re in denial you better seek psychiatric help.
In 1829, German writer Heinrich Heine wrote a play called AlMansour in which he referred to the burning of the Holy Quran during the Spanish Inquisition and said, “Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings.” The wheel of intolerance has come full circle an
