On 6 February 2026, a suicide bomber successfully targeted an Imambargah on the outskirts of Islamabad during a packed congregation of Friday prayers, killing at least thirty-one worshippers (death toll yet not confirmed) and injuring many more. An Islamic State affiliate claimed responsibility, and investigators uphold that the attacker had recently travelled through Afghanistan. The attack is the deadliest in the capital territory since the Marriott attack in 2008, shattering any lingering belief that Islamabad lies outside the geography of sectarian terror. It also served as the latest chapter in a long history in which mosques, imambargahs, Muharram processions, and prayer congregations across Pakistan have repeatedly been turned into mass killing sites.
Since 2001, terrorist violence in Pakistan has taken many forms, but attacks carried out during prayers occupy a distinct place because of their symbolism and social impact. Suicide bombings, indiscriminate gunfire, and planted explosives have been timed to coincide with Friday prayers, Ashura and 21st Ramazan rituals. These attacks are designed not only to cause casualties but to desecrate worship itself and instil fear.
Recent history proves that Shia Muslims have been disproportionately targeted in attacks on prayer congregations, beginning with the July 2003 Quetta massacre in which gunmen and a suicide bomber killed more than fifty worshippers inside a Hazara Shia mosque during Friday prayers, an assault claimed by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and followed by further mass killings such as the March 2004 Ashura procession attack in Quetta, the October 2004 Sialkot mosque bombing, and repeated strikes on Shia gatherings in Karachi, all clustered around the Shia ritual calendar of Friday prayers, Ashura, Chehlum, and 21st Ramzan; consistently linked to sectarian networks operating inside Pakistan. After 2008, this violence acquired a clearer transnational dimension, which increasingly overlapped with the anti-state insurgency led by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, exemplified by the coordinated suicide attacks on Shia processions in Lahore and Quetta in September 2010 that killed more than eighty worshippers. In the recent past, in March 2022, the Peshawar Shia mosque bombing and the February 2026 Islamabad imambargah attack, both claimed by Islamic State affiliates, underscore persistent concerns about cross-border movement and provision of safe havens in our neighbourhoods.
Sunni worshippers have also suffered repeated mass-casualty attacks, particularly where militants sought to punish communities or institutions aligned with the state. A bomb at a Sunni Bareilvi gathering in Karachi’s Nishtar Park in April 2006 killed more than forty people, including senior clerics, while Taliban-linked factions repeatedly targeted mosques in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the former tribal areas, such as the 2009 Jamrud suicide bombing that killed nearly fifty worshippers and the 2010 Darra Adam Khel attack that killed over sixty when the mosque roof collapsed. The most symbolically severe assault came in December 2009, when militants attacked the mosque inside the army’s Parade Lane residential compound during Friday prayers, killing forty worshippers, including senior officers, highlighting how mosques had become legitimate battlegrounds even in high-security zones and how worshippers were targeted, considering them as extensions of the state.
There is a consensus that attacks on worship congregations have profoundly scarred Pakistani society by entrenching sectarian strife, normalising heavy security around religious congregations, eroding law and order, and sustaining extremist narratives through impunity and selective enforcement.
Sufi shrines, largely revered by Bareilvi Sunnis and Shias, have been a target of mass-casualty attacks. The bombing of Lahore’s Data Darbar shrine in 2010 killed around fifty devotees. In 2016, a suicide attack at the Shah Noorani shrine in Khuzdar killed more than fifty worshippers, and in 2017, an Islamic State bomber killed nearly ninety devotees at the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in Sehwan. These attacks demonstrate that sectarian militancy in Pakistan is not confined to a Sunni-Shia divide, but also targets Sunni beliefs, deemed unacceptable by extremists.
Quantifying the exact number of attacks carried out between 2001 and 2026 is not possible with complete precision from publicly available records, as there is no authentic national-level database of sectarian-themed terror attacks. Therefore, there is no record of sect of victims, verified claims of responsibility, perpetrators’ nationality, and judicial outcomes; nevertheless, it is indisputable that such attacks recurred over the period, with Shia congregations disproportionately targeted and Sunni mosques and shrines also suffering major mass-casualty strikes. The dispensation of justice remained weak and bleak, with most suicide attackers killing themselves or being killed at the scene and alleged planners often killed in follow-up operations or prosecuted through opaque legal means, leaving only a small number of clearly documented convictions with no transparent public trial records to refer back.
There is a consensus that attacks on worship congregations have profoundly scarred Pakistani society by entrenching sectarian strife, normalising heavy security around religious congregations, eroding law and order, and sustaining extremist narratives through impunity and selective enforcement. Militant networks have resurfaced under new names; while counterterror operations considerably reduced large-scale attacks after 2015, analysts agree the ideological warfare withal of sectarian militancy remains intact. Two dissenting interpretations however persist: one frames the violence primarily as the product of foreign interference and proxy conflict, acknowledging cross-border movement and funding but often understating domestic radicalization, while the other views mosque attacks mainly as extensions of an anti-state insurgency rather than sectarian warfare, a claim challenged by the long and consistent pattern of attacks on Shia rituals that is difficult to dismiss as coincidental.
The aim was to collate some factual data to bring to the fore the quantum and the challenge posed by such like attacks. Recommendations I will not furnish, as already more brilliant minds have been working for years devising action plans, the efficacy of which anyone can comment on. The recent tragedy, however, underscores a sobering reality: no place of worship in Pakistan can be assumed safe without openly calling out the internal and external nexuses and taking them on, across the board. A quarter of a century of sectarian-themed terror attacks have sought not only to kill, but to erode the sanctity of our beloved faith. Until sectarian militancy is confronted and accountability becomes visible, mosques and processions will keep symbolising devotion under threat, lurking in the dark. Let us accept, worship war is up from slumber.
The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at zulfiqar.shirazi @gmail.com