Daily Times: By Muhammad Akram
LAHORE: The rough and ready security arrangements like closure of cellular phone service in fifty cities, ban on pillion riding in four big cities and calling in aid of civil administration of the armed forces in some places did helped in the passing of Ashura in a comparatively peaceful way.
This may have provided a sigh of relief to a nation told before by the government to be prepared for massive terrorist attacks all across the country following suicide attacks in Karachi and Rawalpindi and two successive time-device blasts in Dera Ismail Khan on and a day before Yaum-e-Ashur on Sunday. The incumbent government credited itself and the security apparatus in all the four provinces, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan for successful arrangements made to ward of serious terrorist threats.
But at the same time it appeared to be either in a state of denial or of little help in devising ways and means to reach some conclusion on how to control the rising sectarianism in society. The successive governments in the Centre and in the provinces have long been seen engaged only in placing stringent measures to let the Ashura pass peacefully but no serious thought was ever given to trace the root cause of the problem, which in view of independent political and religious experts was nothing but the over-religiosity in society.
Categories: Asia, Behaviour, Pakistan, Secularism, Separation of Church and State