There are distinct tell-tale signs that the two suicide bombings - the third was partial as it only partly exploded injuring the bomber - at the Sakhi Sarwar shrine on Sunday causing at least 42 deaths and injuries to thrice that number were the handiwork of the mindset that is on the warpath to impose on the people of Pakistan its own brand of Islam.
Of course, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan has owned responsibility for the heinous act, as it did following attacks on some other highly venerated shrines. There is this battle cry for of 'return to first generation Islam' and that there appears to be no dearth of wannabe suicide-bombers, that's a huge challenge to this country which was created in the name of Islam. Although the fact remains that Islam today is divided in many sects, each nurturing its individualistic personality and worldview, none of them believes that it can flourish in the destruction and demise of the rest.
For centuries, in this part of the world the sects have lived side by side, conceding space to others in the spirit of live and let live. Even when the two principal sects, Sunnis and Shias, came to blows, their differences would evaporate soon afterwards, unlike what we have at our hands today. Mind you there were no suicide-bombers before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
It was the exploitation of the simplistic in the Muslim World that godless communism should not be allowed to win in Afghanistan. That's indeed history but its legacy has not left us in peace since. Who played into whose hands in promoting the mindset that is so much our bane today, we need not go into. But clearly the chickens are coming home to roost.
As expected, the blame-game has started as to who was responsible for lowering vigilance especially required to be mounted when thousands of devotees were present at the shrine in remote low hills of D G Khan District. The local administration was warned of suicide bombing and all that it could to fend off the bombers was done.
According to reports from place of occurrence, none of the three bombers were allowed to enter the compound of the shrine, one blew himself just near the entry point when challenged by the police, and the other two exploded themselves in the makeshift bazaar behind the shrine. The truth is that securing shrines against determined marauders is not as easy as some would like us to believe. A recent survey by the Punjab government says that there is such a thing as security at 261 shrines out of 319 shrines in the province, and remaining 58 shrines had "unsatisfactory" security cover when the survey teams visited there.
This is the reality on the ground, begging the question what else should be done to secure the shrines of Sufis who brought Islam to this place. Obviously, the onus of proof that Islam is a peaceful religion and the responsibility to obtain sectarian peace and harmony lies, essentially, on the shoulders of religious leaders, Muslim scholars and religious political parties. However, it is the government that's duty-bound to create awareness of this curse that is eating into the vitals of Muslim World by degrading the credentials of Islam.
That destructive religious zealots like Mangal Bagh have be allowed to grow and prosper, is a criminal neglect on the part of the local administration. More intelligence on such outfits followed by determined action to eradicate these evils is the need of the hour. One wonders how come these outfits have their own FM radio set-ups and the authorities are helpless. Yes, we should not lower our guard by securing our borders, but the threat to our national existence from within is no less serious.
Of course, one cannot rule out a strong possibility that some foreign hands could be involved in these murderous acts with their potential to destabilise our polity. Unfortunately, even when we have lost more than 4,000 precious lives at the hands of terrorists - of them the suicide-bombers breed being in no short supply - there is not yet in sight a clear-cut strategy and hard determination to remove this threat for all times to come.
We do hear the police laying hands on terrorists' networks and hot leads and DNA tests following the bloodbaths these criminal produce, but in the end, the result is nothing but a forgotten story. Let us wake up to the menace of terrorism and fight it out, once for all.