There’s very clearly nothing that the people or the government of Pakistan can do to undo (even some of the) grave injustice done to the unfortunate Sri Lankan national who was lynched in Sialkot, his family, his country and indeed to all humanity. Yet it would be an even bigger miscarriage of justice, if that is indeed possible, not to learn any lesson from this and do what must finally be done. It also serves little purpose to remind everybody all over again, as everybody seems to be doing, that this was not the first such incident. This is one of those moments in history when we must be prepared to shake ourselves to the core as a nation to find out what exactly has gone wrong, and how to fix it, or risk imploding with unthinkable consequences. Therefore, we must no longer be afraid to ask the questions that need to be asked. And what we do have to go on at this stage is the realisation that when the state surrenders its writ to street muscle – and successive governments have done this in Pakistan – then mob nonsense is a very natural, however unintended, consequence. Information Minister Fawad Chaudhary recently became that rarest of voices that admitted that neither the government nor the state seemed to have the courage to face extremism at the moment. Yet even as he very rightly condemned the Sialkot lynching, his usually straightforward statement did ring a little hollow this time. Because if all those in the position to do something about things can do is tweet their laments, pretty much like the rest of us, then we’re all condemned to being spectators to our own implosion. The government shouldn’t need to be reminded how badly its credibility has been damaged all over the world because of this ugly incident. It must now confront extremism with full force and restore serious, sane discourse in society. If it is unable to make sure that people go to the justice system when they have problems, not carry out medieval sentences on the streets, then it is just not able to do its most basic job. *