It’s now or never

Pakistan is in mourning. December 16, 2014 saw the worst, the most brutal, and the most heartbreaking terror attack in the bloodied history of Pakistan. Men armed with guns and grenades entered the Army Public School in Peshawar, and unleashed a bloodbath that does not have any parallel in the recent history of terrorism. Anywhere. On December 16, Pakistan’s heart broke as its children and adults were killed in a methodical manner that defies words. Children were shot in the head, in the face, in the back… multiple times. Dead bodies of children were sprayed with bullets to double check. Female staff members were shot as they tried to protect the children from men who were emptying their guns on them. A teacher was burnt alive and the children were made to watch. The entire Class IX was killed, barring one who was absent from school that day.

As the men — bearded as per reports — killed one child after the other, there was one slogan: Allah-o-Akbar. And as the school building was being painted red with the blood of its students and staff members, one chant was audible: La Ilaha Illallah Muhammadur Rasulullah. They — the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) — proclaimed it was to avenge the deaths of their families in Fata as the result of the army’s Operation Zarb-e-Azb against the TTP/other militant groups holed up in North Waziristan. The narrative of vengeance. With a difference. It was justified by the chants of words that are the premise of Islam — the religion of almost 96 per cent of Pakistanis.

As Pakistan mourns the deaths of 150 (the number increased as more injured succumbed to their wounds), one question haunts my mind: how were the words of a faith that preaches “He who kills a soul for murder or for causing disorder… on the earth will be as if he had killed all humankind: (The Holy Quran; al-Ma’idah; 5:32), uttered while butchering school children who had done them no harm? How was Allah’s name whose principal trait is compassion and mercy — Rahim and Rehman — taken so lightly by those who killed children? One hundred and thirty-two children.

In the name of Allah, the terrorists kill. In the name of Allah, people who have never harmed anyone are massacred. In the name of Allah, schoolchildren are shot in the head. In the name of Allah, girls are stopped from going to school and shot. In the name of Allah, pilgrims are dragged off buses and killed. In the name of Allah, Christians are accused of blasphemous acts and immolated. In the name of Allah, Ahmadi places of worship are razed. In the name of Allah, Hindus are forced into conversion, their girls married to the ‘guardians of the real faith’ at gunpoint. In the name of Allah, polio volunteers — mostly female — are targeted and killed.

In the name of Allah, mosques become instruments of dissemination of hatred and bigotry. In the name of Allah, the religious clergy decide who the ‘real’ Muslim is. In the name of Allah, religious leaders announce jihad against ‘infidels’. In the name of Allah, jihad is waged in Afghanistan on the white man and his partners — could be any colour, faith, nationality. In the name of Allah, Hindus and Jews are tagged as the enemy, and their annihilation vowed. In the name of Allah, Muslims kill Muslims.

To me, a practising Muslim, there is no act more blasphemous: the usage of Allah’s name to perpetuate violence that defies words; to unleash barbarity that takes no code of war into consideration; to desecrate places of worship of other faiths; to kill people on the basis of their faith, nationality; to burn women to prove a point; to butcher children to avenge real or perceived wrongs; and to justify unmentionable carnage that shocks all who go by the connotation of a human being. How do we let it happen? The 148 murders in that school in Peshawar is our collective pain. The mute witnessing of the myriad actions that brought us to the December 16 massacre is our collective shame. Where do we go from here?

The narrative of denial. The philosophy of escapism. The syndrome of blame-shifting.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 2^nd,  2015.

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