...since they're religiously correct™, Shia Moslems in Pakistain can't call their houses of worship 'mosques,' which are reserved for Sunnis. It's not clear if imambargahs are used for explosives storage like mosques are...
in Rawalpindi was attacked by a jacket wallah that killed three people and injured several on Tuesday. In another roadside kabooming, three people belonging to the Shia community have been killed in
Kurram Agency...home of an intricately interconnected web of poverty, ignorance, and religious fanaticism, where the laws of cause and effect are assumed to be suspended, conveniently located adjacent to Tora Bora...
. The spate of sectarian violence has erupted with full force in the country since Muharram. The pattern is tit-for-tat killings almost every week. For the Shias it is less about Dire Revenge™ and more about self-defence. Although the slow genocidal killing of Shias in the country has kept up momentum, the current streak of madness since Muharram is the modus operandi of a typical sectarian faith-based group.
Our placing religion centre-stage in the state is now paying back its 'dividends'. The country is splitting apart from faith-based and religious discrimination and hatred. Military dictator Zia ul Haq
...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'état plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988...'s insertion of certain clauses in the constitution defies not only Jinnah's vision of keeping the state separate from the business of religion but also of Islam that guarantees non-Moslems a decent life. Appallingly, we are not willing to accommodate even a Moslem with a different denomination, leave alone giving respect to a non-Moslem. Amidst this descent into worse and worse chaos, the state is watching without any effort to extinguish the fire that has swallowed much of the country's serenity and spirit. We have ample proof about organizations dealing in the business of sectarian crimes. The people running these outfits, at times protected by the state such as Malik Ishaq, etc, are leading an active public life. Despite official bans, these organizations are allowed to survive and operate with impunity, having resorted to the officially tolerated subterfuge of reinventing themselves under different names, banners, etc. This lapse is the biggest flaw in our security paradigm that has wrought havoc with the people's lives. Effecting a change in this scenario should start from where the rot set in initially: purging society of discriminatory and hate-filled beliefs that allow some people to impose their version of the faith on others through proselytisation or even coercion. Unless we want the country turned into a sectarian fireball, the state needs to strive to create a sustained civic space that reflects the principle of mutual respect and welcomes the participation of people of all faiths and religions in the public sphere.