A few days ago the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, issued its first report of the Global Extremism Monitor (GEM). The GEM monitored all violent terrorist activities in 2017, across the globe. 27,092 incidents were recorded, during which 84,023 people died across 66 countries. While most of these tragedies occurred in the “fragile states and conflict zones” of the Middle East and Africa; Pakistan and Nigeria have been ranked as most affected by terrorist activities outside of these zones. The report also emphasised that more than their western enemies, terrorist groups and ideology focus on Muslim minorities, pocketed within majority Sunni populations. For these extremists, their first task is to rid Islam of “heretics”, then turn to the rest of the world; as stated by the Islamic State, the Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. The most horrifying finding, however, is that 95 percent of all sectarian violence across the globe, is against Shia Muslims. Pakistan houses the second largest Shia population in the world, with an estimate of over 18-20 million Shia citizens. The first incident of violence against the community was recorded decades ago but it was the Zia dictatorship that proliferated an era of state complicit violence, discrimination and persecution. This surge in violence decreased for two decades; but since 2008, terrorist activities against the Shia community have increased. The Shia community is targeted by bomb-blasts, firings and target killings of prominent members of the sect. Unfortunately, Pakistanis — Shia and Sunni alike — have become used to this violence. It has become part and parcel of living in Pakistan; and to accept that Shias are killed as a matter of routine violence. These trends reflect the failure of the state to curtail persecution and safeguard the lives, beliefs and places of worship of minority communities over a period of seventy-one years. This is evident in case of Malik Ishaq, a prolific Sunni supremacist, who was acquitted on forty terrorism related incidents. The state had to kill him through extra judicial means in 2014. More recently, what went unnoticed by both the interim government and the newly elected PTI was the election campaign that Ahmad Ludhianvi of the Ahle-Sunnat-wal-Jamat (ASWJ) ran on a predominately anti-Shia manifesto. The violence against Pakistani Shias can be placed within the same spectrum of intolerance, bigotry and misuse of Islamic slogans that is prevalent in Pakistan. Alongside the economy and terrorism; tackling extremist ideology needs to be a national priority. The linkage between violence and Islamist extremism must be evaluated, around the Muslim world. Otherwise, we will continue to live in this era of darkness, where Muslims are becoming each other’s deadliest enemies. * Published in Daily Times, September 17th 2018.