Daily Times

Hate is a powerful sentiment, much more powerful than love. Unabated and unrestricted, it can wreak havoc in your personal life; you can lose your family, friends, job and even your children. However, if it is a symbol of national pride and the only emotion that can bind us together, it can be tremendously ‘useful’. That is why we Pakistanis love to hate everybody in the world. From Japan in the Far East to Alaska in the US, and from the North Pole to Antarctica, we abhor almost every country across the globe except (maybe) Saudi Arabia and China. I wanted to add Iran and North Korea in the list of our favourite nations, but I guess they have become too controversial after our last ‘business deal’ with them regarding a stolen technology.

Theologically speaking, we hate every other religion in the world, including (but not limited to) Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism and Christianity. Nevertheless, we ‘pray’ for their followers; we implore them to listen closely to their hearts and look for the ultimate reality beyond the comforts of their mundane lives. We are certain that deep down their conscience always tells them about the truth and they realise the fallaciousness of their ideology. But, they are hesitant to concede because they are scared of their society, their families and their friends. Yet, if they really hate lies and fabrication in religion, their fear will evaporate in no time, and they will, without question, turn towards the enlightened path and eternal bliss. In this journey, our job is to help them, and we should never leave them alone as faith is not a personal matter between them and their God, it is a social issue. We have to try our best to show them the right path, at least once. After that, we need to attempt once more by taking them to the ‘appropriate’ place of worship, and after that, may be one more time by letting them talk to the appropriate preacher. Even with all that well intended hard work, if they do not acknowledge their shortcomings, we can in that case of stubbornness just tell them to burn in hell forever and withdraw our sincere efforts immediately. In future, we have to stay away from such sinners to protect ourselves from their satanic influence.

Considering it as one of our major problems, we also detest sectarianism. We hate plurality of ideas and loathe diversity in religion. We believe it is against our fundamental beliefs to have conflicting points of view. Therefore, we urge everyone to make an effort to bring unity and peace in our country. To achieve this goal, we would like everyone to join our sect, and in the name of God leave their questionable beliefs aside. In this way, we would not only be able to get rid of blasphemy, apostasy, heresy and innovations in our faith, we would also set the precedent for other nations to prosper spiritually and advance their metaphysical powers up to the celestial bodies beyond our universe.

Since we have failed to take any formative action against sectarianism in Pakistan, a country that was strictly created only to help our sect, a crippling disease of ‘moderation’ has attacked us from the west. It was an avoidable menace if we had nipped the evil in the bud, but the problem has grown out of proportion lately. I am afraid so-called modernisation will become fatal for our future if we fail to recognise the threat. So beware folks, in reality, all progressives hate religious people (God forbid) and as agents of Zionism they accuse all of us of fundamentalism, terrorism and religious bigotry. We should never keep quiet in response to their allegations, and always confront them with the truth. We should tell them they are not moderates (since we are the moderates). They are in fact liberals, the fascists who are going to burn in hell along with infidels for a long time. Liberals should also know there is no place for them in our society. They are the trouble makers, western agents with vested interests. Even the ‘semi secular’ Jamaat-e-Islami agrees with this assertion and its Ameer finally has pronounced on television that Pakistan is for the people of (single) faith only. In my opinion, the cure for this disease of enlightenment is simple: compulsory education of everyone in the madrassas for 10 years straight. And by the Grace of the Almighty we are working on it.

In the end, when all other measures fail to bring victory for us, we just have to pray for Armageddon, by which we mean near complete annihilation of the human race except the rightly guided souls. Ordinarily, it can be considered as a disturbing idea, an event that we should all pray really hard to avoid and ask the Almighty to protect all human beings from its devastation, but as the people of right faith, we demand just the opposite. We look for the signs of the end of days everywhere. We discuss it at great length on television; we go through all the religious texts — even those that we claim to be untrue — to find its clues in modern times and keep it close to our hearts as the last sign of optimism. For us, all those who would suffer and die in the process would suffer and die fighting for evil, and would therefore get the treatment they had chosen for themselves. We cannot be responsible for their acts.

As you can imagine now, a tremendous amount of hate boils in our hearts and is all good because it determines our resolve and ignites our national spirit. It helps us attack minorities through false allegations of blasphemy, apostasy and heresy. It is also one of the few assets, besides population, corruption and terrorism that is growing at break neck speed in our country. We should always encourage it.

The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com