Pakistan - The educated terrorist

The Safoora Goth massacre was a dark incident in our already tainted history of sectarian violence. On May 13, 2015, a bus carrying a majority of Ismaili Shias was ambushed and left some 46 Shias dead. Militant group Jundullah claimed responsibility for the atrocity and Saad Aziz, a graduate of Karachi’s prestigious IBA university, was arrested for being the mastermind. The arrest came as a surprise because Saad Aziz did not fit the profile of an illiterate brute, the kind of people usually associated with the likes of the Taliban. However, his arrest did open our minds to the fact that a lot of terror operations are led and crafted by educated professionals who seem to have everything going for them but choose to follow the path of radicalisation. One need not recall the tragic murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl whose beheading was ordered by Sheikh Omer, a British citizen of Pakistani origin, a graduate of the London School of Economics (LSE). Now, the alleged financier of the Safoora Goth massacre has been apprehended; he is the vice chancellor of a private university in Karachi. Yet another man who seems to be an upstanding, educated member of society but now, it seems, he has a very dark side.

The educated terrorist is no longer an enigma in today’s world. Radicalisation has become an ideology, a specific worldview that gives those who practice it a reason to rebel against a world they believe is unequal and unjust. However, the rebellions of today are not like the revolutions of yesteryear when people fought for justice and social equity; they are dangerous rebellions fuelled by extremism and Islamic political jihad. This is a sign of the times we live in. People who are aware, who see what is happening in the world around them have taken up arms — in many instances in the most savage way possible — to oppose a world order bent on warfare and forced invasions. The absence of revolution has created a vacuum that has been filled with a hateful ideology that murders and mains according to warped religious views. This fanatical worldview has traversed the plains of the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, always with Palestine in the background. It is the educated who see the bigger picture and they are rebelling in the worst of ways.

The Pakistani authorities are going after the higher educational institutions to fight the threat on campus and that is necessary, but they must not lose sight of the fact that the madrassas (seminaries) are the original militant factories and must be plowed through first. By Chaudhry Nisar’s own estimation, there are at least 300 identified madrassas with links to terror outfits. They must be dealt with. There is a real danger that the authorities could go overboard with their combing of higher education institutions and bring to book many people who are not part of terror plots but are swept away in an overzealous current of arrests. A few such incidents have already occurred. The seminaries need that kind of focus first.