Extremism gathering pace

June 24, 2024

ISLAMABAD – “THANK you, Mr Jinnah”, said one social media user under a video clip post, which went viral. The clip showed a mob comprising Hindu extremists ransacking and looting a Muslim’s shop in India, enraged because the shop owner shared a photo of his Eid qurbani on WhatsApp.

The obvious implication of the remark was that by creating Pakistan, Mr Jinnah created a safe haven for the Muslims of the subcontinent or they would have faced the same fate as the Indian Muslim shopkeeper, who was confronted for doing his religious duty.

Of course, the social media user did what many of us do. Become delusional and selective. Having read Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s speech: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan”, on numerous occasions, I am sure he’d be enraged at what we have done to his tolerant, equal opportunity vision/ mission.

Just look at the state of the minorities in our blighted, albeit beloved, land. We have atta­cked, maimed, murdered/lynched Chris­tians at will, often, as investigations show, on the flimsiest of pretexts, mostly fabricated, and torched their hearths and homes and bombed and burnt their churches.

We have witnessed unmoved as one after another, young Hindu girls have been kidnapped and then forcibly converted and married to their abductor. We have seen the cries of the families and the victims themselves falling on deaf ears.

We have not been content with constitutionally declaring a particular community not part of our faith, and a minority, but continue to target its members. Assassinations of this community’s members, destruction of its properties and a bar on its