I was traveling on Friday, when I received a message about the tragic news of a blast in Shikarpur. Instead of feeling sad about the heinous incident, I started getting angry. I started visualizing the irrational and hate-filled comments which come up after every attack, be it on Shias, Ahmadis, Christians or any other religious community in Pakistan.

By evening when I returned from the trip, my fears were confirmed. There was no hue and cry among the masses; not many people were bothered. There were no black display pictures on social media; there weren’t any anti-Taliban slogans or protests.

Hardly a month and a half has passed since Peshawar, and we are once again divided on the issue of terrorism.

Why? Do we have short memories, or are our loyalties misplaced? Or is it because the Peshawar massacre victims could not get the label of a particular sect?

Not that we did not have apologists for the December 16 carnage. Not only Maulana Abdul Aziz; there is the anti-Army contingent and their Army bashing never ends.

I remember my own close circle of friends said at that time of the Peshawar attack: “Islam zinda hota hai har Karbala ke baad;” and that “We would not sit peacefully. We will rise and shine once again.”

Even though the incident of Karbala happened fourteen centuries ago, yet we mourn over it every year. If that tragedy has not woken us up despite all these years of commemoration then how will this one event shake us from our slumber?

A couple of years back the Quetta bombing saw people sit on the roads with the dead bodies of their loved ones in rain. I remember hearing the usual hollow slogans, the same comments and litany.

When the Christian couple was burnt alive near Kasur, how come no one woke up? Or maybe those screams did not penetrate our ears due to the wax of bigotry.

How can i forget the event of June 16, the now well-known Model Town incident – who stood up for those victims? Was it not shown live on nation and international TV?

Where are all those people who always speak of unity and chant meaningless slogans? Voices didn’t rise against the Shikarpur attack because it was another school of thought that was targeted.

Our school curriculum is full of biased stories and contradicting tales that are spoon fed to us from the childhood. Along with that we are taught of Islam in multicolor. So how can we talk of unity?

Those who have started speaking against the mainstream mindset are a minority. We keep quoting Jinnah on women and religion, but then we believe what the prayer leader says from the pulpit, even though that may be opposite to what Islam says.

The day a child comes to his senses he is knocked on his head with venom against the ‘others’. Parents fail to make children better human beings and turn them into biased emotional fools. But it is not only their fault as all previous generations have been brought up in a similar fashion.

The way we have messed up our lives, our generations, and our country with this hate preaching, the cults of ‘schools of thought’ and religious divides, it would take not years but ages to fix and bring about a change and convert hate mongering into rationality.

Until and unless we leave the spoon-fed hatred behind, we are doomed to live in relentless manifestations of hate. Forever destined to hearing meaningless words like: deep sorrow, lamenting the loss, holding a meeting, setting up an inquiry commission – and then getting back to ‘business as usual’.

And the sane are left wondering what business is it that has to go on ‘as usual’, if not the ‘business’ of righting the wrong?