Eid is supposed to be a moment for Muslims to put away their differences and come together to celebrate the end of the holy month of Ramzan. But that’s the theory.
Just the way we in Pakistan — and the rest of the Muslim world — have transformed Ramzan from being the month of self-reflection and empathy for the poor into a month-long festival of hypocrisy and wasteful excess, we have also been uncomfortable with accepting Eid to be a festival of love.
It is becoming a festival where we can all come together…to hate other people.
Take this picture, which became viral on social media on this Eid day. This boy wearing a suicide vest was apprehended today from a mosque in Peshawar, read the picture. The accompanying messages by the people sharing the image online were in a consensus: Kick. The. Afghans. Out.
First, this was actually an old picture from 2009, not 2016. Bringing up the older picture was patently dishonest. Except that the dishonesty doesn’t stop there. This kid was not an Afghan national, but a Pakistani from Bara, who was arrested in Wah Cantt. So perhaps we should ask the Pashtuns sharing the image, yes these Pashtun students, clerks, doctors, engineers, civil servants, as to what the message is now: Kick. The. Pashtuns. Out?
If we look at the statistics, a fraction of a fraction of apprehended terrorists have been Afghan nationals. The majority of them would be Pakistanis. And not just Pashtuns, but from all over.
Even if this kid was Afghan, how the hell can the rest of Afghan refugees be blamed for the actions of this brainwashed kid? And by what stretch of the imagination are we showing our indignation at the arrests of Pakistanis in Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the bombings there?
Barring Pakistan, all the countries of the international community are of the opinion that Pakistan has a role in the current instability of Afghanistan. It just isn’t safe for the Afghan refugees to go back. If Pakistanis are actually serious about sending them back, perhaps they should gather some courage and talk about our self-styled Von Clausewitzes that have embroiled us in the intractable mess the region is now in. That we ourselves are now in.
