Where does one begin? Shall we start with the hanging of Mumtaz Qadri which catapulted a largely unknown Khadim Rizvi onto the national stage? Or shall we start the clock with the (first) Faizabad dharna where not so subtle support was given to a radical party, emboldening it to a dangerous degree? Perhaps we should start with Justice Qazi Faiz Esa’s Faizabad judgment, some of the talking points of which seem to have been copy-pasted in the notification banning the TLP.

Or shall we start with the now, in the belief that with the banning of the TLP the clock has been reset and everything that came before was a bad dream, a cautionary tale of mistakes and miscalculations which are presumably never to be repeated. After all, we are told from the highest quarters that it is time to bury the past.

The only problem is that the past isn’t a quiet corpse peacefully decomposing in a grave. It’s still trying to break our doors down.

And so far, the state response has been to cut off our arm and feed it to the monster so it doesn’t just decide to eat us whole.

It doesn’t work, of course. It never has, and it never will. But we already know that. We already know, from both lived and learned experience that the more you cater to the extreme right, the stronger the extreme right gets, at our own expense. Sure, the monster may be satisfied with your arm for now, but it’ll be back, and screaming, ‘But we banned you! You don’t exist!” won’t make it go away.

Not a word was said about the policemen who lost their lives, of course. Just as the previous day a prayer in the National Assembly for those who died in the riots focused only on slain members of the TLP, and not those policemen who lost their lives. 

Zarrar Khuhro

Speaking of bans, there has certainly been a break from the past: Previously, banned organizations would simply rename themselves and resume business as usual. Now, they stay banned (so far) and have action taken against them but if they hit back with sufficient force they will see the government itself present said banned organization’s demands in parliament. I’m not sure this is progress but it is change, of a sort.

And now, after negotiations with the still-arrested chief of the (thus far though not exactly officially) banned TLP the government played what it no doubt considers its masterstroke: taking the mess to an otherwise ignored and disdained parliament to clean up. Even then the degree of the copout was such that this all-important resolution wasn’t presented by the interior minister, but by a private member, MNA Amjad Ali Khan. 

The Prime Minister, of course, did not bother to show up, exhausted as he no doubt was by his address to the nation of the night before. 

In parliament we saw politician after politician eager to prove themselves the truest devotees of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), possibly in order to save themselves from inconvenience/ lynching/ murder at the hands of those who claim to be disciples of a man whose life was marked by forgiveness in the face of oppression. Ahsan Iqbal, who was nearly killed by a TLP sympathizer for his supposed “blasphemy,” went to great lengths to prove his and his party’s bonafides on that front. There was some conviction on display as well, such as when the PTI religious affairs minister Noor ul Haq Qadri questioned the devotion of the PML-N by calling them out on the hanging of Mumtaz Qadri and the police action against the Faizabad protesters. 

Not a word was said about the policemen who lost their lives, of course. Just as the previous day a prayer in the National Assembly for those who died in the riots focused only on slain members of the TLP, and not those policemen who lost their lives. The matter before parliament today will now be discussed further, and sent to a committee and you get no prizes for guessing that this will not placate the TLP one bit. They have smelt blood in the water, have seen their tactics succeed and there is no reason this genie will willingly put itself back in the bottle.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter where we choose to begin, because where this will end is so clearly visible. And on that note, make no mistake: when it comes to the choice between order and chaos, we must stand with order. When it comes to a radical outfit challenging the state with violence we must stand with the state, come what may. But for that to happen, the state must first get off its knees and stand with us.

*Zarrar Khuhro is a Pakistani journalist who has worked extensively in both the print and electronic media industry. He is currently hosting a talk show on Dawn News. Twitter: @ZarrarKhuhro