Murderous Righteousness: 70+ Killed in Two Attacks on Mosques in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa

"Landep News"

Adil Najam

Some 70 people are dead. Nearly a dozen of them were children. Most at a mosque in Darra Adem Khel as they assembled for Juma prayers. Others at a mosque in Sulaiman Khel during Isha prayers. According to Dawn, both were mosques frequented by anti-Taliban tribal elders in Northwest Pakistan.

The purveyors of hatred continue with their murderous spree. Their methods are extreme and extremely inhuman. But their pathology stems from the same pathology of righteousness that seems to thrive in a society where everyone seems to believe that we and we alone have a monopoly on truth and anyone who dares not agree, even in the slightest, with whatever we believe in should be crushed. The tactics of those who hate are the same everywhere. Assert your own righteousness. Hurt, not just to inflict pain, but to spread fear. Attack systemicly and systematically. Take no prisoners.

The institutionalization of righteousness and the instrumentalities of hate (grenades and a possible suicide jacket in this case) are killing us. And we need to confront the purveyors of hatred everywhere. As we have written so many times before, our first priority has to be to bring those committing these acts to justice, and visibly; but we need to be equally attentive to rejecting every other form of self-righteous hatred and loathing – because when we do not, then this is what hate leads to (I realize that these pictures are extremely graphic – which is why we have placed them after the break). Because hate breeds on itself. Small hate, left unchecked, becomes big hate. And this is what huge hate looks like.

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