Dawn: SHIKARPUR on Jan 30, Peshawar on Feb 13, Rawalpindi on Feb 18. In less than three weeks, suicide bombers have targeted three imambargahs packed with worshippers. Outside of Syria and Iraq, Pakistan is the world’s deadliest country for Shia Muslims. Hazara are fleeing Balochistan, and barricades surround segregated Shia urban neighbourhoods. The government said yesterday it will issue gun licences for imambargah defenders. But even high security often fails: a suicide bomber made it through to Abbas Town in Karachi with a carload of explosives, leaving dozens of broken apartments with flesh and body parts hanging from balconies.
Unsurprisingly, Pakistan’s Shias see themselves as victims of religious persecution. Some speak dramatically of a Shia genocide. This is surely an exaggeration. But the irony should not be lost: Mohammad Ali Jinnah, without whom Pakistan might not have been possible, was a Gujrati Shia Muslim. He mobilised millions stating that Muslims and Hindus could never coexist but Muslims, irrespective of sect, could. He was partly correct. Pakistan’s early years were largely peaceful, except for occasional flare-ups around Ashura time. Intermarriages were fairly common, and Shias had joined orthodox Sunnis into enthusiastically supporting Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s 1974 decision to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslim.
But, in a curious flip of history, a 2012 Pew Global Survey shows that 41pc of respondents in Pakistan believe that Shias are non-Muslim. A popular explanation of this blames Gen Ziaul Haq’s Islamisation. His policies distinguished between different sects and indeed did promote discord. However, the massive ongoing fratricide across the Middle East suggests that religious tensions would have anyway boiled over.