Attack at Church in Lahore, Pakistan

ATTACK AT CHURCH IN LAHORE, PAKISTAN:

LINK: http://bit.ly/1bamUyL

The attack at Church in Lahore, Pakistan on Sunday today (March 15, 2015) is horrific and tragic like other suicide attacks by terrorists. The hospital administrators have announced that they don't need help in the form of blood donations and medicines. Due to huge crowd, much of the potential evidence at the site has been destroyed. People are protesting and destroying government property at Metro Bus Terminal.

We need to address a few concerns.

The Madressahs in Pakistan never teach anyone to KILL people though other issues are there. According to Qur'anic verse, one who kills one innocent person is like one who kills entire mankind (Qur'an, 5: 32). Minorities are allowed to practice their faith in a Muslim country. This is the basic teaching of Islam and Madressah clerics would never ask their pupils to kill an innocent person from any faith for whatever reason, unless in 'True Jihad' while fighting enemies or oppressors. Exceptional extremist cases could always be there but we are discussing the issue in a larger context. And those exceptions could arise in the form of 'false clerics' like an incident when once a Hindu was found in Pakistan disguised as a 'Maulvi', (this does not mean all Hindus act like that in Pakistan as a minority).

After 2004 more than 60,000 Pakistanis have lost their lives in terrorist strikes in Pakistan. They were  just Pakistanis including Muslims (Sunni, Shia), Christians and others. Pakistan is a sunni-majority country, so more of Sunnis have died than Shias on overall count due to terrorism. Regarding the attack on Shia masjids and killings of Shias, there is role of international players behind who want to create Sunni-Shia strife in Pakistan.

The way terrorists enter worshipping places of Shias (including the attack on Church today) and blow themselves up shows they don't care for their lives. Pressure tactics could  be used by groups to force certain individuals to carry out suicide attacks like kidnapping their close ones and then threatening to kill them. Or using a special drug to kill the thinking capacity of a person so that he volunteers for a suicide mission. There could be many other tactics used by the agents to "create" suicide bombers. It has been noticed also that most of these suicide bombers are young (some even teenagers).

The goal is to label Pakistan as a terrorist country where Shias and minorities are not safe, and where Islam is being used to oppress other faiths. This is the image of Pakistan which the imperial countries want to paint in the world while they invade and oppress Muslim lands. The TTP militants themselves are funded by external agencies and in the case of attack on Church today, their seems no connection with them here. However there are endless possibilities about who are the real culprits behind this incident, TTP being no exception.

Security needs to be increased at Churches and Mandirs apart from Masjids and Imam Bargaahs.

We need to understand the bigger picture also apart from taking security steps. Hence the security forces in Pakistan need to be watchful and we need to expel the hundreds of Americans from Pakistan who were indiscriminately given visas by Zardari government with Hussain Haqqani serving as the Ambassador to USA. The CIA and Blackwater network in Pakistan needs to be eliminated above all if we want peace in Pakistan. All eyes are focused on North of Pakistan but the government should take active measures about the American agents on our soil 'also'. Once we have welcomed the 'war on terror' inside our borders, we are being exploited endlessly. It started with wrong policy of Musharraff and we could not formulate an independent policy on our own to date. It is still time to become truly independent!

Written by: S Roman Ahsan