Murderers!
It's on days like these that I feel ashamed at my being human, that I feel it's not worth living this life anymore.
I cannot say it better than it has been written here and here.
We are all murderers! We are all complicit in yesterday's events!
For people, who slept well last night and are of the opinion that those who are upset by this atrocity are wrong in being extra-sensitive about this issue, I'd say: "Come and see the blood on the streets"
Oh, and yesterday was also the day Pakistan went nuclear twelve years ago. Call it karma but days like these are never good for humanity!
May 29, 2010 at 5:23 AM
I wonder which of the two events hurt Islam more. The cartoons, or these murders? Alas, the choice might not be so obvious for many nowadays.
May 29, 2010 at 5:55 PM
Shuaib, I think that the cartoon issue was more of a global event in that it involved a "non-islamic" party directly and it elicited response from Muslims the world over, in general, and Pakistan, in particular. That issue grew out of how followers of Islam perceive the Western ideal of freedom of speech and how they want other societies to respect their religious personalities. These murders, however, are local to us and therefore all the more disgusting and worrisome since they truly reflect how we exist as a society, what heinous crimes we are capable of and how hypocritically we deal with their aftermath. Most likely, those shithole terrorists were from amongst us and we have to accept that. I know that if we sit down and try to find the root of what caused people like such terrorists to do what they did (and from what I've read, many have gone over this question before due to its fundamental importance in finding a peaceful method to end terrorism), we would get embroiled with issues that lie at the heart of our present war on terror in northwestern Pakistan and the solutions might not be easy to implement (this does not mean that they should be ignored). But other than what causes ordinary people to become terrorists, the real shame that these murders have helped surface is how we treat minorities. Now this is not a new thing in Pakistan, it has happened to Christians many times before but these murders were more ferocious and occurred at a prime location: the capital of Punjab, which somehow triples their intensity. We have to really make up our mind about how we go about this. Either we let our religious bias blur our perspective or we let humanity stand above all. This is where the onus of lack of religious respect that Muslims decry so often about falls back on them. Can they avoid inciting violence against the Ahmedis or for that matter any other religion?
I'd like to give an example that hits close to home: the Signalianz-cafe group was teeming with emails that either directly addressed the facebook ban or were indirectly concerned with it. Now I don't follow the group (thanks to the Yahoo! filter) but I believe these emails must be loaded with references from Quran and Ahadith and naysayers (the two or three people I know of, therein) must either have been rejected or harrassed. But presently, I see only five emails on the Lahore attack (I can see that this too was initiated by one guy who I have come to identify as a 'naysayer') and I'm guessing that they must either be apologetic or conversation-stoppers, so to say. I'm quite sure no one would have reminded the rest that 'killing one human was like killing all humanity' (I'm paraphrasing some Islamic text I remember vaguely... I don't know if it's a verse or a hadees)
Let's even fuck the minorities' claim if some think it's just the liberals apostates barking, as they would due to their hatred of everything Islamic. Just consider the last time this happened in a mosque, that was in Rawalpindi a while back, I know people who were so traumatized that there were tears in their eyes. On Friday, I heard someone move away from the TV screen at work saying, "koi nahi yaar, Qadiani he thay"
Oh and all this wasn't really addressed to you as I know your intentions are good. I just needed to fart these thoughts out on to the interweb!
June 10, 2010 at 8:02 PM
Agreed, Waqas!