Bombing the Light of God

On the night of July 1st, when the throng of worshippers in the shrine of Lahore's patron saint, Ali Hajvery Data Ganj Bakhsh, was at its peak, two suicide-bombers blew themselves up. The attack, at the heart of a 1,000-year-old centre of Sufi Islam in Pakistan, killed at least 42 people and injured another 175. "The terrorists have done the unthinkable," said a grieving woman at the site of the bombing. Not so long ago many Pakistanis believed the Taliban and al-Qaeda were just innocent Islamists battling the evil Americans. The country is paying a heavy price for their refusal to face up to their true nature. Lahore’s citizens had been bracing for something like this since the attacks in May on two mosques belonging to the outlawed Ahmedi sect, in which nearly 100 people died. Eleven terrorists have so far been arrested in connection with that bombing, including a young engineer from Lahore who was trained by al-Qaeda in North Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s lawless “tribal areas”. Only a couple of days ago, the police leaked a list of targets seized from the captured terrorists. It included top politicians and buildings, including the Data Ganj shrine. The shrine's custodian also said he had received threats. A few policemen had been posted, but after the attack there were protests at the allegedly lax security. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. But suspicion points to a new and virulent offshoot from the al-Qaeda-Taliban nexus, the Ghazi Brigade. This group grew up in response to the siege in July 2007 by commandos of militants sheltering in the Red Mosque in Islamabad, in which 154 people died, including the mosque’s leader, Abdul Rashid Ghazi. The bloodshed at the mosque triggered a wave of attacks on the army and police. The consequent offensive by the Pakistan army in Swat and later in South Waziristan, another tribal area, has led to thousands of casualties. Analysts believe that al-Qaeda and the Taliban are desperate to regain the initiative they lost to the army last year. When they brought the insurgency into the settled part of Pakistan in 2007, their first targets were army and police installations. Now they have shifted to attacks on markets in the big towns. Suicide-bombers have killed and maimed hundreds of civilians in Lahore in the last six months. The terrorists’ wrath, however, is directed particularly at moderate Muslims who oppose them. They are now striking those they consider heretics, such as the tolerant, Sufi-inspired Barelvi sect within Sunni Islam to which most Pakistanis adhere. In March last year terrorists bombed the shrine outside Peshawar of Rehman Baba, a 17th-century Sufi and Pushto poet. In June 2009 Mufti Sarfaraz Naeemi, a leading Sunni cleric from the Barelvi school spawned by Sufi preachers, was killed in a suicide-bombing in Lahore, after he had publicly denounced the Taliban's terrorist ideology as repugnant to Islam. With public anger against suicide-bombing higher than ever—a recent Pew Research opinion poll claims that 80% of Pakistanis oppose them—the terrorists have now attacked the shrine of a Sufi revered across Pakistan and India. Abul Hassan Ali Hajvery was a Persian poet and scholar, born in Afghanistan, who travelled to Syria and Iraq in search of enlightenment before being brought to Lahore as a captive. Here he lived, wrote and proselytised until his death in 1077. His tomb has become a great religious and cultural landmark in Lahore, Pakistan's political hub. The poor and homeless are assured of shelter and food. Food- and flower-sellers, supplicants and beggars depend for their livelihood on its visitors. And pilgrims from all over Pakistan throng the shrine, dancing, playing devotional music, reciting the Koran and singing tributes to the Prophet Muhammad for hours, especially on Thursday evenings, the time the terrorists chose for mass-murder.