After the attack by militants on the Mehran naval base in Karachi, and the horror of the siege and the casualties sustained there, with two militants making their escape after all was said and done, it is becoming harder to simply trash global concerns about the security of Pakistan’s military assets.

Hillary Clinton on her recent visit to Britain has again reiterated America’s and the world’s willingness to help Pakistan help itself and make the hard decisions that call for eliminating the threat posed by religious extremism.

The reported decision by the army high command that henceforth jihadist preachers would not be allowed to enter cantonment mosques, if true, is a step in the right direction. But it begs the other more relevant question: why are such preachers allowed to carry on their hate spreading activities amongst the civilian population? The need is to ban hateful preaching everywhere, including the electronic media which beams right into our living rooms.

The armed forces have also reportedly decided to not allow anymore serving soldiers and officers the special leaves that many were allegedly taking to embark on preaching missions, with some of them wandering off under the pretext to impart military training to whosoever wished to get trained. If true, then it is these very prodigal sons who have now come home to roost. That such leaves were allegedly sanctioned and condoned ill, becomes a professional institution such as the armed forces.

Public show of religiosity and personal piety somehow shall have to be taken out of the professional and public spheres of life to contain this homegrown monster of terrorism which has turned on its own people. In doing so, scholarship needs to be distinguished from inciting and training civilians for waging wars against infidels and ordinary Muslims alike that the fanatics have been targeting. The examples to follow are right there in many Muslim countries that do not allow such anti-people and anti-state activities on their soils; it makes those countries not any less Muslim than we are.

Luckily the average Pakistani remains a moderate and a private citizen in his interaction with spiritual matters, which is exactly the kind of universe we need to strengthen in order to preserve whatever little sanity is left in our collective lives.

There are degrees of state-condoned religiosity in the public sphere, which range from harmlessly broadcasting prayer calls and Ramazan timings to the more sinister practice by the Ziaul Haq regime in the past to flogging citizens in public after summary military trials, all in the name of Islam.

The Taliban enforced the same system in Afghanistan and later in Swat. Their ouster through sheer force, which is the only language they understand, has met with much public approval. But the police remain their sidekicks of sorts and as the state institution they enforce moral policing rather than concerning themselves with law enforcement of the non-religious kind that evades our cities.

We live in a country where in the police books it is a crime for a young man and a woman to go walking on the beach unless the two are married. Cops still demand to see your marriage certificate, hoping only to be rewarded for demanding it.

You cannot be booked for drinking and driving because in this Islamic republic, Muslims are not supposed to be drinking and thus no law exists to deal with that dangerous crime which can kill people, but you can be booked for drinking even though you may not harm anyone by doing so. These are mighty anomalies that defy all decent norms, disorient and stunt an entire society. But the state has no time or will to start setting things right. Instead, it gets into other areas where it should not be.

For instance, the state should get out of the business of even sighting moons and giving mullahs of varying hues the opportunity on such occasions to hold forth on public television and make lengthy announcements with their recommendations on how to live life as a pious, God-fearing Muslim. They have no business telling the people how pious they are and thus have the right to tell others to follow them.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government’s stance on the issue is very clear: let the people start fasting or feasting as and when they please, according to the mosque that they wish to follow in such matters. The farce of celebrating Eid on the one and the same day across the country has remained just that, year after year. The skies don’t come crashing down when people in Peshawar celebrate Eid a day before the majority of Pakistanis do elsewhere.

It is time to stop navel-gazing and wake up to face the crushing challenges that we have thrown at ourselves. Terrorism must be stopped and religion must not be abused. Islam was certainly in safer hands in Pakistan in the 1960s than it is today. It must be wrested back to that safety.

—The writer is an editor with Dawn