Some sane voices in Pakistan - edit. We are talking about an increase in Islamic extremism to which any dissent is not tolerated. Blogger Sana Saleem requested me on Twitter to ask my guest on Breakfast at Dawn, Khalid Zaheer, if he and other liberal Islamic scholars would come together to condemn Gojra as they did against Taliban atrocities. His answer was disappointing but understandable. He said, ‘No. This is the sad part of the story.’

Men of religion who have protested this extreme interpretation of Islam that is consuming Pakistan have been repeatedly targeted. Initially, they contended with threats and later, were killed for their views. The Taliban killed Maulana Hassan Jan, a religious scholar from Peshawar, who issued a fatwa against suicide attacks, calling them ‘un-Islamic.’ In June, Maulana Sarfraz Naeemi, the director of a madrassa who had also spoken out against the militant extremists, was killed in a suicide bombing.It is being said that the local administration was ‘negligent’ in that it ignored a directive from the provincial government to control the situation.

The ‘negligence’ was the reason behind the outbreak of violence. There is also conjecture that members of the banned organisation, Sipah-e-Sahaba, came in from Jhang to burn Christian homes. There are reports that the ‘negligent’ police and local administration ‘simply did nothing.’ There is a big difference between being ‘negligent,’ which is to neglect your duties, and complicit, where you choose to be involved in an illegal act. In a case where more than 50 houses and a church were destroyed, and seven people were burnt alive, when the police and local administration simply do not act is that negligence or complicity? (Mind you, this was a Christian-only locality called Christian Town – is that not indicative of religious discrimination?) Read the article by Naveen Naqvi, here in full...