Worryingly, a survey of about 200 mosques in 15 cities and towns of Punjab has revealed that a good 80 percent of them violated, or were unable to implement, the 20-point government-ulema agreement on Taraweeh prayers on the first of Ramzan. This is not entirely surprising, since many sections of society – practically everybody except the clergy and government – expected just such an outcome. The survey, which was carried out by an NGO, found that it was not just a case of the rules testing the ability of mosques to abide by them; it seemed rather that in most cases especially in rural areas people were just not interested in implementing the finer points of the agreement. Hopefully the government will take notice, accept that it was wrong to go down this road in the first place and take appropriate action. Yet there’s that lingering fear that throughout this crisis the federal government has been living in a bubble of sorts. It completely buckled under pressure from the religious lobby, making Pakistan the only country in the whole world to keep mosques open this Ramzan, and now the risk of the coronavirus spreading like wildfire has increased manifold. Who will be responsible now, the government or the ulema, if failure to adhere to the 20-point agreement results in more people and their families testing positive? Of course everybody knows that the two will simply toss the blame between each other, and all the time continue with their congregations, while the rest of the country counts the high number of cases as things spiral out of control. This is precisely the time when everybody, people and government, should be making every effort possible to enforce a smart lockdown. The number of infected cases is expected to peak sometime over the next two months. Yet this is also the time when the economy needs to reopen, at least parts of it, so people do not die from hunger and starvation even if they can be saved from the deadly virus. Somebody should also explain why Pakistan must be different from the rest of the Muslim world. When every other Muslim government has seen it fit not to open mosques for the present, why must Pakistan adopt a different strategy; especially one with potentially such a high cost? In the interest of the country, both the government and religious lobby are urged to immediately review their agreement and scale down in the face of an expanding pandemic. *