Lahore Attacks: Blame the Foreigners

Another barbaric suicide attack in Lahore which shows all the signs of a jihadi mission by the Punjabi Taliban:

The bombing was captured on CCTV and shown on TV. The first bomber was seen running into a basement clutching a bag filled with explosives and ballbearings, pursued by a guard, before a large explosion swept across the room.

As the smoke cleared a presumed second bomber is seen slipping into the building, against the tide of fleeing worshippers, and running up a staircase into the main area, where he also blew himself up.

Images from the site showed debris and body parts scattered across the blood-stained marble courtyard of the shrine.

The motive for this attack can be found in religious dogma, this was no political protest by the “little guy” against the forces of imperialism; quite the opposite. This was an assault fomented by a powerful and wealthy cabal of Wahabi clerics and their royal Saudi patrons enforcing their version of orthodoxy on ordinary believers by an act of terrorism. And it won’t stop here.

This was a sectarian suicide attack which was planned to cause maximun death and devestation to the ordinary muslims who come to this shrine to venerate its patron saint with music, song and dance. This attack was a deadly message of disapproval of these practices by the Saudi-funded Punjabi Islamist extremists who carried out the attack. Salafi doctrine derides the sufi practice of saint veneration as “grave worship” and idolatry. Wahabi doctrine imported to Pakistan from the Saudi Arabian peninsular will kill people for it.

There has been a strain of takfiri elitist literalism running through Islamic discourse since the 7th century. This doctrine manifested themselves into various sects but the literalists developed a peculiar dogma which regarded all forms of belief outside of its narrow limits as deviant. We are now in a situation where the richest oil billionaires of the world belong to a modernist revival of this sect, and who have no scruple when it comes to funding murderous political fringes in socially fragmented Pakistan, and we have situations like one we see in Lahore today.

The deaths of more than 80 people and some 150 injured demonstrates the horrific acts Al-Qaeda/Taliban groups are willing to commit in order to impose their doctrine. We have seen attacks on Ahmadis and sufis in Lahore. The Pakistani Shia community must surely be bracing itself now for an attack on their own.

CiF has a good article by Mustafa Qadri on the suicide killings by Punjabi jihadis at the shrine of Data Ganj Baksh in Lahore.

True, Punjab has become saturated with welfare fronts for jihadist groups involved in violence here and in neighbouring India. But part of the problem is that Islamic welfare organisations with links to jihadists have stepped in where the state has been absent, providing meals, education and medical services to poor citizens who would otherwise go without.

This does not mean that we are a population of jihadists; rather, that the state has either sat idle or aided Islamists as they deliberately blurred the line between legitimate civil society and militancy. The state must proactively begin the long, slow and difficult process of rolling this back.

As I’ve argued before, one of the key reasons the public has rallied against the militants is a sense that those behind the attacks are not Islamists or even Pakistanis, but foreigners. This mindset creates a dangerous conspiracy theory culture, but it does have one clear advantage. It is difficult for most to be critical of something that is sacred to them, such as their faith. But in blaming outsiders for the violence, people demonstrate their rejection of violence, which they consider antithetical to Islam. Of course, that rejection is at times somewhat hypocritical. Consider, for instance, those who blamed India for the anti-Ahmadi attack in May while giant religious banners openly called the Ahmadi apostates worthy of death.

That’s all very true; blame seeking is big news in Pakistan. So far Indian, Israeli and US/UK “foreigners” have been blamed for last month’s Ahmadi massacre and for this latest attack. Blaming foreigners, even if it is based on fiction, might be cathartic. But chances are blaming Saudi Arabian “foreigners” – no matter how close to the truth, and in particular the nexus between the Punjabi Taliban and al-Qaeda, is off limits.