Huff Post: In a recent incident in Pakistan, an Ahmadi mosque has been burnt and members of their community have been arrested on charges of blasphemy. This by stretch of imagination is not a new incident as Pakistan has witnessed a flurry of such incidents in the near past.
In the last few years, Christian colonies have been attacked, people have been lynched and burnt and many a times cases have been registered against some members of minority communities ( in some cases Muslims also) accusing them of blasphemy.
And even more nauseating than the actual barbaric act are the aftermaths. The reactions often range from insensitivity, trivialization, denial to outright shameless justification. Many are not worried and often try to point out towards infamous Gujarat riots in India or similar communal incidents of violence in other parts of the world to deflect and trivialize our homegrown religious bigotry.
According to some ( and I happen to personally know a few or at least used to know ), this is not cause for concern. According to them “Situation would have been far worse” if majority was actually bigoted. I really do not know what inhuman threshold we have in mind which has to be crossed before we actually acknowledge that there is a problem with our society’s collective mindset. And by the way, all of this is occurring at the time, where many of Muslims are trying to defend Islam in the light of Paris attacks and the resulting negative spotlight.