Priyantha Kumara Diyawadanage was an average man who was living a normal life. He was not born to make cosmic changes his simple, straight forward, vigilant but average middle class life. Yet, all this changed on one fateful Friday in cold and cruel December. Yes, it was a Friday when we all murdered Priyanytha Kumara.
Friday is a holy day for Muslims but the dirty dance of misdirected energy, anger and religious understanding was anything but divine. It was an unholy alliance of an angry, monstrous, barbaric and unforgivable mob that gathered around him, killed him and later set his dead body on fire.
PM Imran Khan is ashamed. “The horrific vigilante attack on a factory in Sialkot and the burning alive of Sri Lankan manager is a day of shame for Pakistan. I am overseeing the investigations and let there be no mistake all those responsible will be punished with full severity of the law”, he said.
This was followed by an equally shocked and remorseful tweet by CM Punjab Usman Buzdar; “I am extremely shocked at the horrific Sialkot incident. I have instructed IG Police to thoroughly investigate it. No one is allowed to take law in their hands. Rest assured, individuals involved in this inhumane act will not be spared!”
Yet, the resonance of these words is as hollow as it could be for only days ago, the government of Pakistan made truce with a political party—Tehreek-e-Labbaik—the followers of which were involved in killings of policemen who were on duty.
Kumara was of Sri Lankan origin and as a guest in our country, his protection was the duty of the state. And as Muslims, it should have been everyone’s priority. Yet, there are plenty of misleading voices to mar the calling of sanity. However, the policemen that were killed by Tehreek-e-Labbaik were all Muslims and residents of Pakistan. The question is, if we can forgive the blood of people of the same religion, what expectations do we hold from them to punish the monstrous lynching of a man from another country?
It is time to call a spade a spade. For once, forget India, FATF, GSP Plus and the ‘soft image’ we grapple to have but can never achieve. We, as Muslims, are accountable to Allah, we as followers of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) are bound to adhere to his teachings and we as humans are expected to display kindness and the basic requirements of being human. None of this was paraded on Friday or any day in the past, on the day the angry TLP men killed and lynched policemen earlier this year, or when in Kot Radha Kishan, a pregnant wife and her husband were burnt alive or in Mardan when Mashal Khan breathed his last breath or in Gojra, Lahore, as houses burnt. This reeking inhumanity needs to be at least addressed as such.
There is a series of events, one more loathsome than the other, yet the pattern is consistent. In all these incidents, we see a mob mentality that is not just perpetuated but fed by certain powerful elements in society like a blind eyed administration, collaboration of all segments, crippled law and order and the most dangerous of all, a two faced political condemnation.
Burdened by the uproar of the Pakistani public, we heard a condemnation by the leader of Jamat-e-Islami, Siraj Ul Haq, this time. “What happened in Sialkot was an insult to Islam”, he said. There can be a debate on the garbed support for militancy by JI in the past, yet his tweet minced no words.
However, the messages by the Head of JUI-F, Maulana Fazlur Rehman and another religious leader Mufti Munerbur Rehman surely did garb their sentiment in political incorrectness. While he called the event shameful, he lashed at the government and international establishment for maneuvering these events to make a case against ‘religious sentiment.’ “In the garb of such incidents, the international establishment tries to malign religious segment and the law of Pakistan.” He condemned the international establishment diverting the criticism.
Mufti Muneebur Rehman, who had declared the truce with TLP after the killings of policemen as a ‘happy day for nation’ was also critical of ‘the role of media’ while condemning the attack on the innocent Sri Lankan man. “The media should show restrain, they should not label a person or a group of people as killers without proper evidence. This is un-Islamic”, he said. Conspicuous by absence in his statement was any reference to the ‘act’ being criminal or un-Islamic.
So while uproar is loud, we cling to little straws of hope, for instance, how one person at least in the maddening crowd resisted against insanity by trying to shield the body of Kumara or how many have been arrested post-tragedy. So we could not prevent but can we stop any more horrific incidents?
The fact is, that’s not enough! Just because you think killing is bad, doesn’t mean you have done your duty in this quagmire. Killing is bad. Yet so scarce are morals in my Islamic state these days that even the bare minimum is looking like a herculean task.
The ugly truth remains that there is little hope that much will come out of these ferocious condemnations. Already, government officials are showing a lack of confidence when you speak to them. Spokesperson to PM Imran Khan, Shehbaz Gill, openly forewarned that the media and politicians will forget the story in a few days. Unless we detach crime from ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’, we will continue adding to the sin, not eradicating it.
We cannot keep hiding behind bigotry in the name of our religion.
So yes, Priyantha Kumara is the man we all murdered, some by hitting him, others by encouraging criminal behavior, by giving dangerous lectures based on wrong ideology, by allowing them to create havoc repeatedly, or most of us, just by staying silent, or trying to dilute the situation.
The murdered Kumara, the average man, is now bound to make history, like it or not.
Kumara is now a test case for the survival of the state of Pakistan. I am not known to be a person who creates sensation by the deliberate choice of dramatic words. I try to keep things in perspective and I have always been known as an optimist. But try as you may, there is not even a flicker of hope in the repeated barbaric attempts of savagery.
We want assurance. We want clarity. And we want punishment.
For once, we must all unite and ensure each and every murderer, gets to be punished in the most severe way and all those who have misrepresented our beautiful religion so wrongly need to be silenced once and for all.
So, we start by ensuring tough and severe punishments to not just those who were there in Sialkot in that mad hour, but also the puppeteers who have repeatedly being giving oxygen to this dangerous fire. It’s time now. Otherwise the curse of injustice will engulf us all.
As I said before, now you call a spade a spade!