Adil Najam
Shia processions in Lahore and Karachi – commemorating the martyrdom of Hazrat Ali (RA) – were attacked. In Karachi seven people were left injured. In Lahore 18 were killed, 190 injured. The suicide attack on the Lahore procession triggered panic, mayhem, and further clashes. Sectarian tensions, already high as a result of a series of orchestrated attacks against Shia targets, have been further flared by these inhuman and murderous attacks.
Once again, my hands are trembling as I type this post. With rage. With anger. With anguish. I have no words that can console the wounds of those who have fallen. No words to explain the horror that has, yet again, transpired. No words to express the angst that tears at my heart – wanting so badly, needing so desperately, for this madness to stop.
I have chosen the two pictures above for a reason. The first is of what seems like a young boy, wounded and bleeding, in Lahore. The second is of two suspected gunmen who had allegedly opened fire in Karachi. The first is a representation of the anguish I feel. the second of the anger I seethe in.
I do not believe in vigilantism. But I do believe in justice. (How could I not with the name I have?). I do not know how the rot that has taken root can be stemmed, but this I know: law and justice will have to be a large part of what happens. The rate at which killers and would-be-killers are prosecuted and brought to justice has to exceed the rate at which they blow themselves up.
Why is it that we keep having to write these horrendous and gut-wrenching posts about attacks on Pakistanis; again, and again, and yet again. Yet, we do not write posts about the killers and murderers who are doing this and planning this being brought to justice? We would like nothing more than to be able to do so. Believe me, we have tried. We scour the newspapers to find news of these killers and their puppet-masters being brought to justice. But we do not find them.
We realize that it is not easy to prove such cases. But that should only mean that we need to try harder. Pakistan is at war, and the course of this war will change when the narrative changes from stories about helplessness at these constant attacks and killings to narratives of ‘getting’ those responsible for this. That means that law enforcement – the police and the judiciary – has to be at the heart of this battle. Not only in reducing the number of such incidents, but also in bringing culprits to justice.
And that is why I have included that second picture. I want to know who these two men behind the chadors are. I do not want them to be lynched. I do want them to get a fair hearing. But I also want to make sure that if they are indeed the culprits then they are brought to justice. I want to hear about how they are tried. I want to know how our judges judge them.
And if that does not happen, then I want to know why the police was not able to make a case against them, why the judges were not able to swiftly bring them to trial and judgment, and why our self-important media did not make all the fuss about this that that are so good at making on so many other things.
How long before Pakistan ends up in civil war because Pakistan is mistreating the minorities and now they have taken on or have gone after the biggest minority of Pakistan. Just imagine Shea’s, Qadiyanis, and Christians of course. If they get together to deal with the situation what will Pakistan will be like. Just think. How long can this attitude of better and you will continue.
@Bhitai
“Only a hater will remain unmoved by the death of innocents. ..Or a sociopath.”
Idividually they may be, but as a class they cannot be called innocent as it were the Shias also who had supported the movement for declaration of Ahmadies as non-Muslim ‘Waajibul-Qatl’. Today they are being massacred for the same sin by LJ, TTP, etc., who hold both of them as ‘Wajibul-Qatl’. What a retribution!
“although i in no way support these barbaric acts, but i have never felt any sympathy for shias…a religion based on bugz, keena, jhoot, shirk…”
@ibn-e-Ali
If a wholesale massacre of shias can’t evoke sympathy in your heart, it simply tells me you think they somehow deserved it (hence your reference to shirk etc.).
Only a hater will remain unmoved by the death of innocents. ..Or a sociopath.
Ibne Ali’s ideological brethren, who consider shias, qadianis, barelvis “idiots” and who consider their “religion based on bugz, keena, jhoot, shirk…” conducted more attacks today in Quetta and Mardan on Shias and Qadianis and murdered more people.
Why is the demagogue, the Ustaad-e-Fidayeen not arrested? Is the CJP vacationing in France? Is this ghunda above the ghunda law of the land?
If the flood is a test, Pakistan failed it.
If the flood is a punishment, then this nation’s hearts are sealed, eyes, are blind, and ears are deaf!
These so-called Muslim majority just don’t get it. Indeed, they are morally dead to nurture hatred and to breed serpents among their folds and under their sponsorship!
Taliban claim responsibility for Lahore attacks – Dawn September 3, 2010
“It’s revenge for the killings of innocent Sunnis,” a spokesman for Qari Hussain Mehsud, mentor of the Taliban’s suicide bombers, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
“We also have videos of the fidayeen (bombers) and we may release them,” the spokesman Shakirullah Mehsud told Reuters.
Hussain is a senior leader of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan
….
Commonly known as “Ustad-e-Fidayeen” or “the mentor of suicide bombers,” Hussain began his militant career with an anti-Shia group before joining TTP, the main Taliban grouping in Pakistan ….