Islam has become our bane and our devotion to this religion has all but blinded us of the real virtues of humanity and the goodness which exist, independent of divinity and the mythology of yore. We see not good and bad save as Islam dictates to us and Islam's diktat today are but the whims and fanciful interpretations of the ignorant and ascetic mullah who has never read a book other than those available to him in the madrassa for fear of learning that the religion he has dedicated his life to, by design or by choice, has many a shortcoming which he is unable to accept.
We have become a people enslaved to this ideology, steeped in ignorance, incompetent in our entirety and unable to innovate and think for ourselves. Our only solace in these trying times in the face of a God who seems to be punishing (or testing) us for being of this faith is the belief that the world is not for the Believers and that the Akhira is not for the kufaar. By lying to ourselves in this manner we have completely forgotten that the Muslims of the past were given the duniya in abundance so much so that the Arabs after the Messenger (pbuh) ruled an empire which stretched from the heart of Arabia to the shores of the Atlantic. Tell that to a Believer and he'll say that our Amaal have brought this upon us. There is simply no knocking sense into him. His circular arguments will forever defeat any logic which your arguments may have.
We will be slaves for all time to come until and unless we begin to separate the functioning of the Pakistani state and our fate as a nation from the grip of divine foretelling and stories of impending doom, the conquest of Jerusalem, the arrival of the Messiah, the one-eyed monster and the fitnah of Yajuj and Majuj. Kids today are told of the grave, the day of judgement and the hooris of Paradise before they are told of the comity of nations and our place therein. Tell them of religion, but tell them also of the religion of others and teach them to respect their Gods as they would want their God respected. This is what the Prophet (Pbuh) taught us but his teachings of tolerance are lost upon us, as we become a nation increasingly extremist nurtured by the protection we have within our own borders and the absolutely dismal regulation of the State in this regard.
Our dream is truly in tatters and we're far too blind to see it. Anybody who speaks out against the shackles imposed by religion and the way it has condemned us to an unruly fate is an asylum-seeker in the West unless of course the mob gets to him before that, in which case he's lynched and buried under the angry sentiment of a nation enraged in the face of truth.
Religion should guide our private, spiritual lives and therein religion will operate pristinely and in unison with other religions and the writ of the Pakistani state. Seek to enforce it as the will of the people and the rule of law, then be prepared to watch how quickly this country unravels itself seeking answers to questions which have never been and never will be answered.