SPEAKING in the National Assembly on Tuesday, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan stated that the lynching of two men at the hands of an enraged mob in the aftermath of the church bombings in Lahore on Sunday was “the worst form of terrorism”.

The tragedy does indeed compound the original horror, particularly since the assailants — even though they are yet to be identified — were in a sense victims themselves: their fury was kindled by the assault on their community. Does this take society’s behaviour in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in a twisted new direction?

Could the future be one where members of various communities turn against each other, thus achieving the goal the terrorists have so far unsuccessfully been striving for? An answer of sorts can be found in the minister’s speech.

Know more: Mob lynching is ‘worst kind of terrorism’, says Nisar

Chaudhry Nisar invoked the example of earlier attacks on imambargahs and mosques, saying that a violent mob reaction such as that in Lahore had not been witnessed in those incidents.

He went to the extent of citing the example of the Charlie Hebdo killings, pointing out that the minority Jewish community of Paris did not erupt in violence.

This is true. But there is a distinction to be made between the anger in Paris — or that experienced by terror-drenched Pakistanis in general — and what fuelled the lynching in Lahore: religious minorities in Pakistan have been targeted in a sustained fashion by militant and terrorist groups for at least a decade and a half.

These communities have had their backs to the wall for a very long time and, further, have for generations borne the brunt of discriminatory practices and laws — the worst being the blasphemy law.

While Pakistan has seen lynching incidents in the past, often over a blasphemy accusation, these have been premeditated murder in the sense that clerics and others have knowingly incited a mob to violence.

In Lahore’s case, to delineate, the crowd’s actions — though horrific— appeared spontaneous. This provides a window into the pain and frustration of the country’s religious minorities, left unprotected by a callous state that simultaneously refuses to offer any meaningful redress.

Now that this eventuality has occurred, the state must realise the need to pursue this incident with much more seriousness than it has tended to show in the past.

There are avenues of identifying the perpetrators of the lynching, and of ascertaining whether any incitement to violence occurred; those responsible must face the penalty of law. But in the larger picture, the state and government need to improve security across the board, improve police performance and urgently take ownership of religious minorities and vulnerable groupings.

Without the reversal of the growing sense of victimhood at the level of the community, the future bodes dark.

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2015

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