We are losing
Only right can win this war. Its mandate requires no APC; its base is the very segment of people that require swaying.
The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and studied law at Lincoln’s Inn and the London School of Economics. He tweets @AsadRahim
We were told this past week that the man called Narendra Modi was a poll away from leading India. From manning a tea stall to manhandling Gujarat, Modi has climbed hard … and stepped over some 700 Muslim bodies to do it. India hardly needs an Advani-on-steroids come 2014, but what’s bad for India is good for the BJP.
Back in the land Modi fondly calls ‘dushman mulk’, the average Pakistani may find Satan a cleaner candidate. Furious at the two neighbours sharing intelligence over Mumbai, Modi raged, “Gunah Pakistan ne kiya, hamla Pakistan ne kiya, log Hindustani maaray gaye, tabahi Hindustan ki hui, aur Pakistan Hindustan ko sawal bhejta hai?” As the crowd went wild, Modi screamed at Congress to stop “writing love letters” to Islamabad. This is, after all, a man who knows what the mob wants.
But after Pakistan’s horror over Modi’s rise and rise wore off, something else set in: redemption. Having long been lectured across the border that this was a stillborn state, it was the ultimate ‘I-told-you-so’ moment for many Pakistanis. Wasn’t Modi the very demon Pakistan was made to escape?
A country founded against the tyranny of the majority — foregoing geography, foregoing ethnicity and founded on a dream: the safety and security of India’s Muslims. There was, and is, a romance around the story of Pakistan that sets it apart from the others.
Today, that dream is dead. The ever-brave, ever-suffering Christian community lie bombed in prayer, mass-murdered in a house of worship. Their killers brought ball bearings with them, to murder children in church. The Land of the Pure continues to eat itself.
But these people are not of us. They are not stakeholders, they are not misled souls, they are not pawns in the greatest of Great Games. They are death cults. While the press argues over acronyms of the militant groups, the latter take pleasure in cutting up our women and children.
And the state is surrendering. It fights not when churches are blitzed with ball bearings, not when bombs rip through poor Hazaras, not when school buses in Quetta are torn apart in the air and not when Sufi shrines are burnt to the ground.
The opposition’s newborn saints were as bad: from Babar running them to Rehman Malik running from them, terror sent the PPP belly-up. Come election time, the Party tiptoed back to Sindh rather than campaign under threat … leaving the ANP to get pulped.
But the left is not the problem; the right is.
Only the right can win this war. Its mandate requires no APCs; its base is the very segment of people that require swaying. But the PML-N is busy evaluating all options, pending a further evaluation of its evaluation. The PTI wades in a sea of ‘we regrets’ and ‘we condemns’. To the right, it seems, sad songs win wars.
But mourning for three days is easy — fighting for 3,000 is not. Those asking what 10 years of fighting has achieved have a point: it will take 10 more. The centre takes comfort in the fact that it’s anyone but them, but the war will come to them; this sickness will spread to Lahore and Islamabad. Of four provinces, the writ of the state is over in three and a half … and Southern Punjab, sirs, is most of Punjab.
Some 1,400 years ago, a delegation from St Catherine’s monastery sought protection from the Prophet of God (pbuh). The Prophet’s (pbuh) resulting covenant with the Christians of Sinai was tear-inducing: “Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by God! I hold out against anything that displeases them … no one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses … no one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day.”
If those against the state of Pakistan are to be believed, that this war was about God all along, then perhaps, it’s time we follow suit, and obey the covenant. It’s time ‘the nation’ saves their churches and fights. God bless the Christian community.
God forgive the rest of us.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 26th, 2013.
Back in the land Modi fondly calls ‘dushman mulk’, the average Pakistani may find Satan a cleaner candidate. Furious at the two neighbours sharing intelligence over Mumbai, Modi raged, “Gunah Pakistan ne kiya, hamla Pakistan ne kiya, log Hindustani maaray gaye, tabahi Hindustan ki hui, aur Pakistan Hindustan ko sawal bhejta hai?” As the crowd went wild, Modi screamed at Congress to stop “writing love letters” to Islamabad. This is, after all, a man who knows what the mob wants.
But after Pakistan’s horror over Modi’s rise and rise wore off, something else set in: redemption. Having long been lectured across the border that this was a stillborn state, it was the ultimate ‘I-told-you-so’ moment for many Pakistanis. Wasn’t Modi the very demon Pakistan was made to escape?
A country founded against the tyranny of the majority — foregoing geography, foregoing ethnicity and founded on a dream: the safety and security of India’s Muslims. There was, and is, a romance around the story of Pakistan that sets it apart from the others.
Today, that dream is dead. The ever-brave, ever-suffering Christian community lie bombed in prayer, mass-murdered in a house of worship. Their killers brought ball bearings with them, to murder children in church. The Land of the Pure continues to eat itself.
But these people are not of us. They are not stakeholders, they are not misled souls, they are not pawns in the greatest of Great Games. They are death cults. While the press argues over acronyms of the militant groups, the latter take pleasure in cutting up our women and children.
And the state is surrendering. It fights not when churches are blitzed with ball bearings, not when bombs rip through poor Hazaras, not when school buses in Quetta are torn apart in the air and not when Sufi shrines are burnt to the ground.
The opposition’s newborn saints were as bad: from Babar running them to Rehman Malik running from them, terror sent the PPP belly-up. Come election time, the Party tiptoed back to Sindh rather than campaign under threat … leaving the ANP to get pulped.
But the left is not the problem; the right is.
Only the right can win this war. Its mandate requires no APCs; its base is the very segment of people that require swaying. But the PML-N is busy evaluating all options, pending a further evaluation of its evaluation. The PTI wades in a sea of ‘we regrets’ and ‘we condemns’. To the right, it seems, sad songs win wars.
But mourning for three days is easy — fighting for 3,000 is not. Those asking what 10 years of fighting has achieved have a point: it will take 10 more. The centre takes comfort in the fact that it’s anyone but them, but the war will come to them; this sickness will spread to Lahore and Islamabad. Of four provinces, the writ of the state is over in three and a half … and Southern Punjab, sirs, is most of Punjab.
Some 1,400 years ago, a delegation from St Catherine’s monastery sought protection from the Prophet of God (pbuh). The Prophet’s (pbuh) resulting covenant with the Christians of Sinai was tear-inducing: “Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by God! I hold out against anything that displeases them … no one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses … no one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day.”
If those against the state of Pakistan are to be believed, that this war was about God all along, then perhaps, it’s time we follow suit, and obey the covenant. It’s time ‘the nation’ saves their churches and fights. God bless the Christian community.
God forgive the rest of us.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 26th, 2013.