What is needed is for the state and society to come together and agree on a process to challenge extremists.
SAUDI ARABIA: Pakistani right- and left-wing ideologues keep discussing the contents of the speech that the Father of the Nation gave on August 11, 1947, in a seemingly never-ending debate on whether Pakistan was meant to be an Islamic nation or not, and while they engage in that, the reality is that in the last six decades, we have consistently moved backwards.
The rise of violence from the 1980s onwards with successive governments unable to clamp down on it has become such a problem that it now threatens to engulf the entire state of Pakistan. Today, outfits have become so powerful that they are able to challenge the writ of the government. What is needed is for the state and society to come together and agree on a process to challenge extremists.
Masood Khan, Jubail
Published in The Express Tribune, January 20th, 2014.
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