The society we live in, the place we reside in and the people we interact with shape

our perspectives and how we perceive the society. We perceive the society based
on our experiences and encounters. In the modern world, Pakistan is perceived
generally negatively by the international community. The lack of education and the
resulting lack of tolerance and rationality has proved disastrous for Pakistan. I had
the close-up view of such issues when I moved back to my paternal village. My
village is located 100 kilometers north East of the Bahawalpur city. Thats right,
its almost the heart of South Punjab.
A thing that I noticed from my time I spent in South Punjab was that deprivation of
education and a resulted ignorance was common around here, like in many other
rural areas of the South Punjab. I soon learnt that engaging in a meaningful
conversation about religious tolerance and widespread of modern education is a
social suicide. That is because people start viewing you as an outsider as soon as
they see that their centuries old ways of thinking and superstitious faith is
somehow "threatened" by your logical arguments and rational way of viewing
various affairs. What I am going to mainly focus on is how religious intolerance
has handicapped the sense of rationalism of the people of rural areas of South
Punjab and many other areas of Pakistan. The ignorance and intolerance that is
drived by illiteracy has led to several feuds over the years and has done nothing
good to this society.
Faith healers over medicine, fantasies over logic and religious discrimination over
sense of tolerance and peace are few of the several concerns that illiteracy and its
assosciated ignorance has given birth to. Government's lack of attention towards
quality education and failure of the state to bring top notch schools to areas like
southern Punjab has led to a very volatile mindset being created among the
common people of the rural areas. I still remember engaging in a conversation with
one of my servants over Dr Abdus Salam, the only Nobel Prize laureate of
Pakistan. No matter how hard I tried to convince him of what Abdus Salam did to
make Pakistan proud, his argument was limited to the point that since Abdus Salam
was an Ahmedi muslim, his contribution to the field of science and his
achievements for the country cannot be lauded. Such narrow is the mindset of
countless people of this country which is as amusing as it is tragic. And truth be
told. I dont blame them for that since this is what they were taught over the years.

And then happened the hanging of Mumtaz Qadri, who in cold blood, killed

Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab during PPP's rule. I wont go into the details
of the circumstances which led to his cold blooded murder since people are already
aware of that. While Taseer's funeral went peacefully, a few weeks later his
supporters gathered in Islamabad to protest the govt's decision and presented
ridiculous demands in return for dispersal. The so-called "aashiq e rasool" mob has
done tremendous amount of damage to the public and govt property in the Capital.
And while their actions should've been condemned by most people, the case is very
different here. The people of my village hail Qadri as a martyr and fail to
understand that his action was fueled by religious fundamentalism and the hate that
is taught by unqualified and undignified religious clergy which haunts the people
of Pakistan in face of illiteracy and lack of finance to afford a proper education.
The tragedy here is not that certain people hold certain views about a particular
person and an issue but the fact that illiteracy and instilled hatred shifts a mindset
from being over defensive to aggressive and ultimately downright hostile. Whats
disturbing is the fact that militancy and religious fundamentalism is taking birth
right under our noses and masses dont even have the clue what they're becoming
victimized of.

Pakistan's military has launched several operations in the tribal belt of Pakistan
with a high rate of success. The enemy is being hunted from the past several years
but are we doing equally more to curb the militancy and religious fundamentalism
in its cradle? Its a well established fact that military operations have become need
of the hour but it saddening how roots of the fundamentalism are still not being
countered successfully. It should be kept in mind that military operations will yield
their desired results but the effective elimination of the threat that haunts the entire
nation is only possible if the State invests in quality educaiton, encouragement of a
more tolerance loving mindset and make it a priority to propagate the message of
peace and equality. Connect the dotes and a path to the solution will be made more
than visible. When the dust of battlefield settles, when the ricochet and explosions
are there no more, we will still have a lot on our plate.