No Unity Amongst Pakistanis

www.pakpositive.com Why is it that we Pakistanis don't take any notice whatsoever about a certain thing or event unless it concerns us? There are bomb blasts in our country nearly everyday, but does it make any difference to us?

We watch the breaking news on TV channels everyday, that a bombing took place in some city which killed and injured a certain number of people. For us, these people are just numbers but the people who get killed everyday are someone's son, daughter, father, mother. Be honest, when was the last time you said a dua for those victims? Now I am not saying I'm perfect, sometimes I don't take notice either.

The question I ask is that why don't we take notice? Why have we become so self centred that it makes no difference to us if fifty people died in Peshawar or 25 people died in Faisalabad? We just carry on with our lives as normal as if nothing happened.

Then there is the whole concept of unity in our country, or the lack of it. Sometimes I hear people saying the most insensitive things about people who have a different ethnic or religious background to them, which I would rather not repeat over here. When the Ahmedi place of worship was attacked in Lahore, some people went as far as to say that they "deserved" it.

Why, may I ask did they deserve it? When the terrorists attack a Marriott or a police station, it's condemned by everyone. But when the same terrorists decide to attack members of a minority group of the country, not a word of condemnation comes out of anyone's mouth.

And again, when Shahbaz Bhatti was killed brutally, it was only the minority groups of the country who came out to protest. Why didn't anyone else go to those protests to show solidarity with them, are those minorities not Pakistani?

Just because they belong to a different relgion does that automatically make them inferior to us? Go out on the street today and ask the first person you see what the meaning of the white strip in our national flag is, will they be able to answer?

Think about it, if all those Pakistanis and muslims living in western countries such as the UK and US, were treated like second class citizens and were getting killed for no reason, which is happening here in our country today, how would that make us feel?

This "not caring" attitude stretches to the entire spectrum of our society, not just terrorism. This includes the ever-increasing prices of everyday items in our country. Take the low levels of electricity in the country. If you are suffering from load shedding, you buy a generator and are at peace. But what about all those people who cannot afford to buy a generator?

What do the rest of us do when they come out on the streets and protest against the absence of any electricity in their houses? We sit comfortably in our air conditioned/fanned rooms, even though we were suffering from the same problems and hardships not too long ago. And now that we have found our solution, we decide not to care.

So, today I ask all of you, or whoever reads this that why is it that we as Pakistanis never show unity? We always find ways to separate ourselves in one way or another, starting from religion, then to a provincial level, going onto the language we speak, and heck we even have a system of distinguishing between a burger and a bun kebab! Some of us even consider overseas Pakistanis as "traitors" to the motherland.

When the 9/11 attacks took place, or even the 7/7 attacks in London, in both cases the countries became united and grieved for the deceased as one nation. Why can't we do that? We call ourselves the biggest victims of terrorism because we have had countless 9/11's and 7/7's but what are we as Pakistanis doing to stop them?

Showing unity and solidarity to our fellow countrymen would be the first step, I think so anyway.unity divided www.pakpositive.com