It was a regular day at work for me until the notification of shooting in the Christchurch, the largest city in the east coast of New Zealand, appeared on my desktop. The tragic news of how a few gunmen had started a shooting spree and how they were audacious enough to broadcast the killing of innocent people live followed. This news sent a chill down my spine because I knew it was Friday and there would be many people attending weekly Friday congregation in mosques. And the other reason it shook me was because I was once part of exactly similar situation 9 years ago.

It was 28th of May, a celebrated holiday known as Youm-e-Takbeer, in the commemoration of tests that made Pakistan a nuclear power and gave us a much needed deterrence from foreign invasions; ironically, not from the attacks within. We were more than a thousand people gathered in the mosque for Friday congregation when we heard sounds of gunshots. Most of us thought it as usual aerial firing; a dangerous but common practice on celebrations in Pakistan. We couldn’t imagine that it could be a shooting spree on the very mosque we were praying inside. A moment of lull and then the intensity of the firing increased. Panicked by the thought of attack, people tried to secure the main hall. But it was too late. We saw two gunmen entering the hall and shooting indiscriminately at people of all ages – adults, children and aged. A usual calm of only a few moments earlier turned in to loud sounds of firing bullets and bangs of grenades, moans of the injured and chaos surrounded by lifeless corpses drowned in pools of human blood of the same color as of the attackers. The unthinkable had happened.

I do not want to go into the gory details. However, I learnt how one of the shooters at Christchurch live-streamed this callous act of shooting innocent people just to show the world that how far he can go against the people he considered a threat in 'his' country. Nothing can be as repugnant as resorting to the violence against the people which might be different religiously or culturally. The gruesome details of this cowardly act kept appearing on the newsfeed. Visuals of lifeless bodies of innocent people lying on floor drenched in blood kept appearing at the computer screen. The social media was abuzz with the tragic news. While most of the people were condemning the attack there were some people who tried to blame it on victims on flimsy grounds. And my mind was continuously drawing the parallels between the two incidents.

I was one of the fortunate people to survive the attack; 96 others weren’t so lucky. The similarities between both heinous acts are astonishing. The shooter considered us a threat and an unwanted lot in 'his' country just because we didn’t subscribe to his version of faith while the shooters in New Zealand also considered those innocent people as 'invaders' and unwanted in 'their' country just because of different faith and skin color. The name of one of the mosques in New Zealand is Al-Noor and ours is called Bait-ul-Noor.

The hatred that prompted both these people to take lives of 'others' wasn’t different in nature. Social media, mainstream media and state narratives have played their role in spreading fear among masses about the few who aren’t compatible with the 'Indigenous cultures' or the religion of the majority. The uncurbed hate speech adds fuel to the fire to a point where some people do the unthinkable for the 'greater good' of their community or country.

As a person who picked up bodies of his loved ones after a similar attack and faced mixed reactions and commentary by the people, I believe there are two types of people in the world. The ones who would call such an attack a heinous crime against humanity and would condemn it despite having differences with the victims and the second kind is that which will somehow blame the victims for incurring this wrath upon themselves.

The peaceful coexistence of multicultural and multi-religious society is only possible when we condemn terrorist attacks without any ifs or buts. There is a dire need to confront this menace of hatred and intolerance around the world and to educate common people, so that no more apologies are tendered in the support of hatred and intolerance in order to save innocent human lives.