Shame on all 180 million of us.
KARACHI: This is with reference to Sami Shah’s article of July 28 titled “The Pakistanisation of lunacy”. Apart from the irony, occasional humour and touch of sarcasm in the article, what the writer is saying is generally true. And I say this notwithstanding that our so-called ‘Mullah Brigade’ likes to blame the rest of the world for all the problems that currently ail Pakistan.
If the rest of the world equates Pakistan with terrorism and mayhem, it is for good reason and doesn’t mean that there is worldwide conspiracy to defame our good name, contrary to what our saviours in khaki would have us believe.
Pakistan is reaping the harvest of the past 30 years or so of its cultivation of the forces of bigotry, doublespeak, intolerance and hypocrisy in all aspects of its existence: Religious, social, political as well as intellectual.
Such is our infamy that whenever there is a lunatic who blows himself up in a foreign land, we wait anxiously, our fingers crossed, hoping that the perpetrator is not one of us. Our country accounts for more suicide bombings than Iraq or Afghanistan and has more than its fair share of sectarian and other hate crimes.
We keep blowing up our schools so that our girls don’t get an education, keep silencing our moderates who preach tolerance and keep living in the false belief that the world is out to get us. The fact is that for most of the rest of the world, which in any case is moving ahead, we are not more than a headache that refuses to go away.
Shame on all 180 million of us.
Hasan Abidi
Published in The Express Tribune, July 29th, 2011.
