Getting personal
Naive almost to a fault, Imran Khan has linked the bombing in Peshawar to a half-baked conspiracy theory.
The writer is editorial consultant at The Express Tribune, news junkie, bibliophile, cat lover and occasional cyclist
Lying in bed on a lazy autumn morning in October 2001, something dark and nasty reached out to me and my wife. The Taliban, or one of their affiliate groups, had gone to St Dominic’s church in Bahawalpur, shot the policeman on guard at the gate and then killed 15 people in the congregation. Listening to the radio report with a growing sense of unease, we wondered if we knew any of those who had died. We did — and two were close relatives. It was the first mass-killing of Christians in the history of Pakistan.
Sitting at my desk in Bahawalpur on another quiet Sunday, our daughter playing with the cats, wife exchanging family gossip with visiting relatives, something dark and nasty reached out to us again. One of my brother-in-laws’ daughters is to marry in January. Six members of the family she is to marry into died in the twin suicide blasts at a church in Peshawar and the mighty engines of ‘Denialistan’ hummed into life.
Chief Artificer of denial is a cricketer-turned-politician who is busy, along with his fellows, turning the clock back in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s (K-P) education system while at the same time, demonstrating both the narrowness of his vision and the shallowness of his intellect.
Unfortunately for Pakistan and despite not sweeping to power in a tsunami of egotism, this arriviste commands a significant portion of the national narrative.
Naive almost to a fault, Imran Khan has linked the bombing in Peshawar to a half-baked conspiracy theory and strikes by American drones in the tribal areas. Neither have the remotest connection to this atrocity — which was about rabid intolerance, not drones or dark plans hatched in musty corners.
It is that same intolerance that sees jihad making a comeback in school books across K-P and books withdrawn from a Punjab school’s curriculum that contained text to be used in the teaching of comparative religion. It is the same intolerance that saw wanton destruction in Shanti Nagar, in 1999, or the Gojra riots, in 2007, that killed eight Christians and the same intolerance that drove out the family of Rimsha Masih on a trumped-up charge of blasphemy. The same intolerance that sees Hindus fleeing their homes in Balochistan.
None of these incidents — and many more like them — are the consequence of plots hatched by foreign powers, the CIA, Mossad, MI5 or alien life-forms from a galaxy deep in the constellation of Orion.
They are the consequence of nurturing a national mindset that harbours a fear of and a prejudice against anything which is ‘other’. That mindset is sown from the earliest age in schools everywhere and bolstered by hysterical sermons delivered by foaming-at-the-mouth clerics, assorted ‘anchors’ of TV programmes that are an ethical desert and consolidated by terrorists who know they can count on the tacit support of our elected representatives.
That dark thing that reached out and touched me and my family comes from within, not without, and for the first time in 20 years of living in Pakistan (the 20th anniversary of my coming here is not until October, but I trust I will be forgiven that minor ‘stretch’) there is a sense that old age and infirmity are unlikely to be the cause of my death.
There is now an inevitability about the advancing extremism which is mother and father to the terrorists that killed 83 men, women and children in a Peshawar church. Those that would rail against the tide are a fading voice, muttering in their corner of Facebook or Twitter, never able to muster more than a few hundred on the street in protest against whatever the atrocity may be and without political power or a champion.
My wife recently moved house in Islamabad, taking a flat in a quiet residential street. The neighbours have complained to the landlord about him ‘renting to Christians’ and she is considering moving again. Suddenly, in the pressing of a brace of detonators, it has got very personal. We, my family and those around me, are the ‘other’ and one of these days, they may come for us as well.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 26th, 2013.
Sitting at my desk in Bahawalpur on another quiet Sunday, our daughter playing with the cats, wife exchanging family gossip with visiting relatives, something dark and nasty reached out to us again. One of my brother-in-laws’ daughters is to marry in January. Six members of the family she is to marry into died in the twin suicide blasts at a church in Peshawar and the mighty engines of ‘Denialistan’ hummed into life.
Chief Artificer of denial is a cricketer-turned-politician who is busy, along with his fellows, turning the clock back in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s (K-P) education system while at the same time, demonstrating both the narrowness of his vision and the shallowness of his intellect.
Unfortunately for Pakistan and despite not sweeping to power in a tsunami of egotism, this arriviste commands a significant portion of the national narrative.
Naive almost to a fault, Imran Khan has linked the bombing in Peshawar to a half-baked conspiracy theory and strikes by American drones in the tribal areas. Neither have the remotest connection to this atrocity — which was about rabid intolerance, not drones or dark plans hatched in musty corners.
It is that same intolerance that sees jihad making a comeback in school books across K-P and books withdrawn from a Punjab school’s curriculum that contained text to be used in the teaching of comparative religion. It is the same intolerance that saw wanton destruction in Shanti Nagar, in 1999, or the Gojra riots, in 2007, that killed eight Christians and the same intolerance that drove out the family of Rimsha Masih on a trumped-up charge of blasphemy. The same intolerance that sees Hindus fleeing their homes in Balochistan.
None of these incidents — and many more like them — are the consequence of plots hatched by foreign powers, the CIA, Mossad, MI5 or alien life-forms from a galaxy deep in the constellation of Orion.
They are the consequence of nurturing a national mindset that harbours a fear of and a prejudice against anything which is ‘other’. That mindset is sown from the earliest age in schools everywhere and bolstered by hysterical sermons delivered by foaming-at-the-mouth clerics, assorted ‘anchors’ of TV programmes that are an ethical desert and consolidated by terrorists who know they can count on the tacit support of our elected representatives.
That dark thing that reached out and touched me and my family comes from within, not without, and for the first time in 20 years of living in Pakistan (the 20th anniversary of my coming here is not until October, but I trust I will be forgiven that minor ‘stretch’) there is a sense that old age and infirmity are unlikely to be the cause of my death.
There is now an inevitability about the advancing extremism which is mother and father to the terrorists that killed 83 men, women and children in a Peshawar church. Those that would rail against the tide are a fading voice, muttering in their corner of Facebook or Twitter, never able to muster more than a few hundred on the street in protest against whatever the atrocity may be and without political power or a champion.
My wife recently moved house in Islamabad, taking a flat in a quiet residential street. The neighbours have complained to the landlord about him ‘renting to Christians’ and she is considering moving again. Suddenly, in the pressing of a brace of detonators, it has got very personal. We, my family and those around me, are the ‘other’ and one of these days, they may come for us as well.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 26th, 2013.