Bomb Blast in Crowded Daata Darbar (Shrine), Lahore

[CAPTAIN AMERICA]

why do you say all this to me?

I really meant it for kugga that was saying the Taliban were fighting invaders.

 

[Old School]

CCPO Aslam Tareen is doing good job. He found HuJI links with this bombing. He also did a good job in Rawalpindi last time during the terror attack on the GHQ. As the HuJI's name surface , it raises lot of questions because HuJI is not a new kid on the block. They work with other old boys in the business.

 

[GUNNER]

Nothing is safe anymore

By Syed Talat Hussain

July 04, 2010

The writer is executive director news and current affairs at Aaj TV (syed.talat@tribune.com.pk).

All credits eventually run out, and the one the state of Pakistan won for beating back local Taliban from the Malakand and the tribal belt is no exception to this rule. As it is the situation in the tribal agencies is precarious and there is no end in sight of the ongoing military operations, but the real challenge is now in the urban areas where the blow-back is being felt with devastating consequences.

The Data Darbar attack is the cutting edge of this new dimension of the war against terror that we joined willingly and are now finding it exceedingly hard to wind up. This is not the first time a revered place, housing the remains of a holy man, has been hit. In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, almost 50 such incidents have occurred. The militants brandishing the swords of an exclusivist, puritanical Islam destroyed graves with impunity and bombed tombs. From the small neighbourhoods in Orakzai agency to the attack on the tomb of Rahman Baba, in Hazarkhwani, in Peshawar, the Taliban have desecrated every symbol displaying faith they are in dead disagreement with.

But Data Darbar is a different case. Its centrality to the life of faithful spreads across the sub-continent and even beyond. For this to be under the fire of hateful suicide attackers is an affront far more serious than any other the nation has witnessed so far. By that token the inability of the government, and state institutions, to prevent such an attack from happening has to be categorised as a failure far egregious than anything we have witnessed before. The symbolism of the attack is not that a particular brand of Islam is unacceptable to the terrorists. The message is that nothing is safe from their reach and that the law enforcement agencies are completely in the dark about those who are visiting death upon the innocent citizens.

Seen in the broader context of the terrorists’ reach, now it seems to encompass the entire north and northwest of Pakistan, clouding two capital cities, Peshawar and Lahore, and penetrating the entire landscape of two provinces. Of course, this is mere symbolism. It is not as if Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are about to fall to the terrorists. In fact, a visit to the Data Darbar the day after the attacks was a soul-lifting experience. People were thronging the place like never before. They had lived through a terrible experience in a little under 18 hours.

Yet spectacular attacks like these drum up the international (and now increasingly domestic) hype about a country falling, failing or flailing in a sea of problems, the grimmest of which happens to be a crippled state machinery and an audacious network of terrorism sponsors and their foot-soldiers. It is this hype that has become the bane of Pakistan. It is nibbling away achievements that the country has to its credit in fighting down organised militancy in the northwest.

Regrettably, internal incompetence and lack of coherent planning to deal with urban terrorism has only reinforced this image of Pakistan adrift, of a country slipping badly. Feuding politicians in the Punjab and an endless turf war between the governor and the chief minister has only accentuated the problem of not focusing attention on counter-terror efforts. The federal government’s lead political man, the prime minister, is hopelessly out of sync with needs of the times, and like his president, seems so far away from meeting the challenge of strategising against spreading terrorism.

This gives Pakistan’s detractors like India, cagey powers like the US, keen observers like the EU and even interested states like China a lot of reason to think that Pakistan, in spite of its many merits, is living dangerously. And we are living dangerously — from one terror attack to another, spending the days falling in between on political trivia. The Data Darbar incident is a tactical success for the terrorists, whether from outside or home-grown. The manner in which the nation has responded to this attack is a victory for the people and a tribute to their spirit. Those in government need to seriously think, is there anything that they have done with regard to this attack that can be called praiseworthy?


Published in The Express Tribune, July 5th, 2010.

 

[Lion Of Pakistan]

muslims will not attack women & children, yet they do it,Muslims cannot attack Mosques, yet they do it,Muslims are very Tolerant, yet they want to kill any one who goes against their beliefs & so on


When are you people going to come out of that this particular mentality that a Muslim is the most innocent self righteous pious person on the face of the planet? When the fact is that all the handlers & executors of these acts of holiness are Muslims

I am yet to know about a Jew or a Christian who blew himself in other's holy places? WHY always its the Muslims who are ready to kill & die? There is certainly something wrong with the very foundations of the system that stands on the pillars of self righteous & superiority syndrome

Are you really THAT sure its Muslims doing this?
You should look into reports of foreign secret services inside Pakistan. They have even found Indian weapons in Balochistan, go google it if you like and if you don't find it tel me ill link you to it. OPEN YOUR EYES DON'T FALL FOR THE PROPAGANDA.
They've been seen all over Pakistan carrying m16s, and issuing covert operations. Don't be so misguided look into these reports, their a way to make look Pakistan unstable, and take down the infrastructure. and there have been many jews and christians. Look into the Jewish resistance movement when the British came into Jerusalem. And Irish Republican Army(Christian-Catholic) that were ready to kill and die for their believes and independence.

 

[seekers]

Are you really THAT sure its Muslims doing this?
You should look into reports of foreign secret services inside Pakistan. They have even found Indian weapons in Balochistan, go google it if you like and if you don't find it tel me ill link you to it. OPEN YOUR EYES DON'T FALL FOR THE PROPAGANDA.
They've been seen all over Pakistan carrying m16s, and issuing covert operations. Don't be so misguided look into these reports, their a way to make look Pakistan unstable, and take down the infrastructure. and there have been many jews and christians. Look into the Jewish resistance movement when the British came into Jerusalem. And Irish Republican Army(Christian-Catholic) that were ready to kill and die for their believes and independence.

This is not propaganda, this is history of Muslims.
celric of one school of thought still said that yazid is muslim and should be titled with razi Allah,even he killed and did the worst crime with Ahlebayt(A.S) in Karbala.These munafiq cerlics knows that their Salat is not acceptable without Durod on Rasool Allah(SAWW) and Ahlebayt(A.S) but they still saying razi allah to killer of Ahlebayt(A.S).

This school of thought was terrorist of the Past and terrorist of current time.

 

[CAPTAIN AMERICA]

Are you really THAT sure its Muslims doing this?
You should look into reports of foreign secret services inside Pakistan. They have even found Indian weapons in Balochistan, go google it if you like and if you don't find it tel me ill link you to it. OPEN YOUR EYES DON'T FALL FOR THE PROPAGANDA.
They've been seen all over Pakistan carrying m16s, and issuing covert operations. Don't be so misguided look into these reports, their a way to make look Pakistan unstable, and take down the infrastructure. and there have been many jews and christians. Look into the Jewish resistance movement when the British came into Jerusalem. And Irish Republican Army(Christian-Catholic) that were ready to kill and die for their believes and independence.

The King David Hotel bombing was an attack carried out by the militant right-wing Zionist underground organisation, the Irgun,[1] on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946.[2] The hotel was the site of the central offices of the British Mandatory authorities of Palestine, the Secretariat of the Government of Palestine and Headquarters of the British Forces in Palestine and Transjordan.[3][4]

To me thats a legitmate target, that is a far cry from blowing shrines, mosques, and civilians, what we are seeing in Pakistan is a depravity and a Abomination of an Epic evil insanity.

 

[sparklingway]

Ghamidi has the courage to speak the ideological truth and the Irfan Siddiqui has nothing better to apologetically defend the terrorists (like most Jamaatis)

 

[DaRk WaVe]

Sectarianism has poisoned Pakistan​

The recent attacks on a prominent shrine in Lahore demonstrate how the unrest in Pakistan is caused by a minority of few who cannot tolerate the plurality of beliefs in Pakistan. The Tehrik-e-Taliban are lying through their teeth when they claim that they do not attack public places. It's becoming more and more apparent that these militants aren't resisting American hegemony; this a war to determine Pakistan's future and, by proxy, the future of Islam.

Whether the Tehrik-e-Taliban actually arranged the bombers' suicide belts is irrelevant; they have created a domino effect that's likely to spread from commercial capitals such as Lahore to cities with historic shrines and Pakistani historical sites, such as Multan, or Taxila.

Unlike Baghdad, where violence between Islamic sects is a product of the war America is waging, the onus of last Thursday's blasts falls squarely on us, the citizens of Pakistan. We have been complacent about sectarianism for too long.

A good friend who works for a transportation company told me in 2007 that in villages along the highways to Waziristan where the Taliban had seized control were the bodies of butchered Shia Muslims. That year, Lahore's public was too busy mobilising about the judiciary and President Musharraf to pay the violence any mind.

Sectarianism has a brutal history in Pakistan that existed long before militants in Afghanistan began calling themselves the Taliban. I remember as a child in Lahore the broadcasts of gun violence outside Shia houses of worship during the early 1990s.

Many Pakistanis feel that the attacks on two Ahmadiyya mosques last May, where gunmen unloaded bullets and grenades on Friday prayer-goers, were unprecedented. Certainly the Ahmadiyya community doesn't think they are.

To have a Pakistani passport requires citizens to assert that they are not part of the Ahmadiyya community. In a sense, holding that passport also makes you complicit in the blasts that killed dozens in Lahore's most famous Sufi shrine last week. Our inability to understand that this war is about national identity is rooted in the same complacency.


We are OK with the state deciding for us who is or isn't Muslim. In this regard, the Pakistani government has the weakest moral fibre in taking on this growing strand of extremism. It is hypocritical to fight the Taliban in Waziristan if we are okay about denying citizenship to millions of Muslims born in Pakistan.


It may sound extreme of me, but we should be jailing clerics in Pakistan that give edicts declaring believers to be non-Muslim or anti-Pakistani. It may seem extreme to an American that writers who deny the Holocaust are imprisoned in Europe, but extreme contexts call for extreme measures.

Pakistanis must stress how being born or raised in their country is enough to be Pakistani; laws preventing Ahmadis from referring to themselves as Muslims were amended to the constitution by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s.

I remember being uneasy at my desk in middle school when I was studying at Aitchison College in Lahore, and some of my classmates were getting bullied for having marks on them after returning from Shia processions during Muharram. Pakistanis themselves are the only ones capable of stamping out this discriminatory culture.

Some proactiveness is necessary on our part to make it clear that mystics, Shias, Ahmadis and Christians are all fellow Pakistanis. When you are pulled over by street police in any major Pakistani city, the first bit of information the police ask for is your family name. From one name your caste, religious beliefs and affluence is determined.

This came as a shock to all of my family who have emigrated away: that collectively our stock in our own nationhood has plummeted so. In a sense, these problems are all accrued debt we've accumulated for being so complacent. In the light of our bigoted constitution and deterministic culture we have to – for ourselves – decide that being Pakistani is enough to make us all countrymen. Otherwise, we might as well just refer to ourselves as Taliban, Muslim extremists, Islamic militants, and so forth.

Sectarianism has poisoned Pakistan | Basim Usmani | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

 

[Solomon2]

Devil's Advocate here:

Exactly WHY are Pakistanis supposed to fight this creeping Talibanization? Are Pakistanis not Muslims? Aren't all Pakistanis supposed to be seeking the same goals the Taliban are? If the Taliban are doing so, only more aggressively, then why shouldn't Pakistanis side with the Taliban? Won't that save the Pakistani populace from further bombings and casualties?

 

[T-Faz]

Slight alteration I would like make in the article,

Mystics, Shias, Ahmadis, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jews, Atheists and Christians are all fellow Pakistanis

Much better now, all are covered.

 

[sparklingway]

Devil's Advocate here:

Exactly WHY are Pakistanis supposed to fight this creeping Talibanization? Are Pakistanis not Muslims? Aren't all Pakistanis supposed to be seeking the same goals the Taliban are? If the Taliban are doing so, only more aggressively, then why shouldn't Pakistanis side with the Taliban? Won't that save the Pakistani populace from further bombings and casualties?

You're not being the devil's advocate but rather trying to get a bigoted response from the various apologists who roam these forums.

These things have been debated thousands of times, and answered in hundreds of ways. Trying to get a reply on which you'd want to humiliate people is not nice.

Intentions speak louder than words.

 

[Patriot]

Devil's Advocate here:

Exactly WHY are Pakistanis supposed to fight this creeping Talibanization? Are Pakistanis not Muslims? Aren't all Pakistanis supposed to be seeking the same goals the Taliban are? If the Taliban are doing so, only more aggressively, then why shouldn't Pakistanis side with the Taliban? Won't that save the Pakistani populace from further bombings and casualties?

Yeah; you'd like to prove to western world that muslim are bigots.Well news flash not every Muslim follows salafist ideology and no it is not our mission to kill everyone.I know Talibans are biggest friend of you as they help you in portraying Muslims as bad humans.

 

[Hyde]

any details revealed about who was behind this attack? i mean any name of a suicide bomber?

 

[Old School]

any details revealed about who was behind this attack? i mean any name of a suicide bomber?

Aslam Tareen probably knows by now as he made significant progress.

 

[Solomon2]

You're not being the devil's advocate but rather trying to get a bigoted response from the various apologists who roam these forums.

My dear sir, no! I perceive that the ideological response of Pakistanis to the Taliban is soft, diverse, and blunted - answered in "hundreds of ways", as you put it. I would like to see it honed to a short, sharp weapon that the majority of Pakistanis will agree with and support.

Trying to get a reply on which you'd want to humiliate people is not nice.

You've lost me here.