Karachi wears the eerie, ghost-town look once again this Saturday. The city mourns the killing of the cleric Dr Safaraz Hussain Naeemi by a suicide attack in Lahore. While the Punjab government declared a local holiday in Lahore and offered a state funeral for the departed, Karachi, as if acting on cue, called off all exams scheduled for the day, and transporters and traders went on strike.

Public transport is off the roads and there’s a near complete shutter down in effect—a sense of déjà vu pervades the tense air. Back in Lahore, the slain cleric’s son’s was the voice of sanity. He appealed for calm amongst the restive seminary students, urging them not to resort to violence, for his late father would not have endorsed it.

Mufti Naeemi’s ‘crime’ was that he snubbed the Taliban and called for their eradication if peace were to be restored in Pakistan. He was among the very few religious scholars who unequivocally disapproved of violence as a means of effecting change, regardless of towards whatever high and lofty end. Shariah, he believed, could not be imposed on the back of a gun, Taliban style. Violent protests were his pet peeve.

Ensconced in the traditional, apolitical scholarly tradition of Islamic learning, the late Mufti followed in the footsteps of his late father, Maulana Mohammad Hussain Naeemi who, after immigrating to Lahore from Muradbad, UP at independence, founded his seminary, the Jamia Naeemia. The seminary has stuck to its Dars-i-Nizami syllabus, and shines as a bright star of scholarship; as a bastion of a tolerant faith, for this is how the vast majority of subcontinent’s Muslims have practised Islam for hundreds of years in our part of the world.     

Yet, it is of no comfort to note that since Friday night, enraged protesters in Karachi have burnt down three vehicles. While all have condemned the brutal killing of the late Mufti, the mighty religious establishment of this city, as opposed to the slain scholar’s son, has not appealed for calm. None of the high priests or Islamic scholars has come forth and condemned the Taliban and their violent ways in words and terms the late Mufti had done. There has only been qualified and guarded criticism, if any, of groups and individuals sowing terror in our cities. And this is precisely what is wrong with us. 

Strikes and protests bring untold misery to the daily wagers, thela-wallahs and the commuters in Karachi. Shutting down the country’s economic nerve-centre at the drop of a hat remains the unfortunate norm. Every tragedy turns into a turf war in Karachi, and seen as a test of who can bring this city of teeming millions of the poor to a halt. The sultry weather then drives protesters to violence, and in an oxymoronic way, Karachi freezes. The people lock themselves up in the relative safety of their homes. Even the birds seem to be fewer in the sky.

Karachi deserves better.