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Wise monkeys

As the story goes, one day a young man told his mother that soon one of the members of the family would disappear. Next morning, when the family woke up, they found that the house had been burgled and their youngest member was not to be seen. Amid the hue and cry, a woman remarked: “Yes, my son has run away with the valuables but we must also admit that he is a gifted soul for he knew beforehand that one of us would not be here today.”

This anecdote brings to our mind Interior Minister Rehman Malik, the man in charge of national security as fate would have it, who every now and then warns that terrorists will strike a particular place. But seldom does he succeed in running down the terrorists, who carry out their designs at will.

The people’s predicament can hardly be more hopeless: knowing that someone is out to kill them but helpless to prevent the same. What does this all bring out if not that the state has been outdone by the forces whose favourite pastime is blood sport!

And look what our politicians on either side of the political divide are up to? Holding out an olive branch to the militants who are committed to a diabolical ideology. The ideology that posits the world as a spectacle of incessant struggle between Islam and kufr. The ideology for which Islam is synonymous with a particular sect and the rest are only heretical. The ideology that makes it incumbent upon its adherents to wade through blood, if need be, to stamp out the rival creeds and make their own supreme.

The ideology that is intolerant of all dissent and divergence, and looks down upon all opposition and disagreement. The ideology that sanctifies bloodshed and glorifies violence, all in the name of religion. The ideology whose appetite for blood is not satisfied with the killing of one or two people but with en masse murders. The ideology that believes in creating an inferno herein so that its followers may have paradise as their abode in the hereafter and the ideology that calls for setting up a monolithic, retrogressive society as its ultimate goal.

If our political masters want to negotiate with the upholders of this ideology, they’re welcome to do so but only at the peril of this and future generations.

That said, it is quite understandable why our political leadership is making peace overtures to the militants. The country is heading for elections. The politicians can’t conduct their electoral campaign freely in the face of possible terrorism. This evidently is a general explanation.

The majority of the mainstream political parties have all along been staunch supporters of a dialogue with the militants. Some of them, naively enough, see an end to the country’s counterterrorism alliance with the US as the only solution to the problem of militancy. These parties have consistently shown greater concern at the drone strikes on the militants’ suspected sanctuaries than the death of people at the hands of the terrorists.

As for the ruling party, it may be compared to the three wise monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. Two of its three watchwords are: grand national reconciliation and doing nothing to serve or even save the citizens. Since the militants are part of the nation, they should also be part of the reconciliation process.

Thus in January this year, it was only the killing of more than 80 members of the Hazara community in Quetta and their refusal to bury the deceased that made the powers that be sack the provincial government and clamp governor’s rule on the province.

And this month nearly the same number of deaths of the members of the same community in the same city together with the same threat aroused the federal government from its slumber and made it crackdown on the militants. If a couple of deaths don’t quench the terrorists’ appetite for blood, the same also don’t move the ruling party to action.

Yes, the sectarian bloodbath in Balochistan predates the present government’s induction. But it doesn’t mean it should just twiddle its thumbs. It’s for those in control of the state machinery to spearhead the efforts to bring the miscreants to book. If the government’s hands are tied and the agencies are not cooperating with the law-enforcement departments, not to speak of allegedly aiding and abetting some militant outfits, it’s high time the ruling party spoke out rather than hush the matter up.

In the context of the Memogate scam, which had jeopardised his government, former PM Gilani had accused the establishment of acting as a state within a state. Why is the government now keeping mum? Political expediency must have a limit, especially when the very existence of society is at stake.

The government’s failure to rein the extremists doesn’t in any way absolve the society at large of its responsibility. It’s unfortunate that we continue to labour under several misconceptions about the militancy, such as: the war on terrorism is not ours, rather it is essentially America’s war; that the terrorists, particularly when they target a place of religious significance – such as a mosque or a shrine – are not Muslims and that it is the work of foreign forces, which are antagonistic to Islam and Pakistan being the sole Muslim nuclear power; that Pakistan was meant to be a citadel of Islam and that it is the responsibility of the government and people of Pakistan to actively support Muslim resistance movements wherever they spring up; that politics should be a branch of religion and that it’s the most sacred duty of the state to establish the supremacy of one creed.

Such notions will make it difficult for any government to go all out against the terrorists even if it has the will to do so. Religion and politics then should be kept apart. Religion ought to be the private affair of the individual and the state should not try to make them good Muslims; rather it should endeavour to make them good, law-abiding citizens.

The state should treat all people equally irrespective of their caste and creed and ensure that no one, including the state itself, imposes ones beliefs on others. The prime responsibility of our government, as elsewhere, is to its own people and it should put their security, welfare and good above anything else.

There are more than 50 other Muslim countries but none of them has claimed to be a citadel of Islam. At any rate, it is ridiculous for a country, which itself is in the grip of diabolical forces of religious extremism and terrorism and which needs foreign assistance to survive economically, to have such a ‘lofty’ claim.

Finally, homicide is equally bad whether it is of a Muslim or non-Muslim, of a Shia or a Sunni, whether it takes place in the mosque or on the road. To those who have no regard for human life, it does not really matter where they kill the people, as long as they kill them.

The writer is a freelance contributor. E-mail: hussainhzaidi@gmail.com

Hussain H Zaidi, "Wise monkeys," The News. 2013-02-25.
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