When my brother passed away, just one year shy of thirty, my mother, ever resourceful, sought out other mothers who had experienced the incomprehensible pain of losing a child. That was how she discovered Grief Directory, a national initiative that offers support, advice, services, and information to families bereaved and affected by terrorism — and how she came to know Dr. Fatima Ali Haider.
It is fitting that an organization centered around grief was founded by a Pakistani Shia woman. Over the past several decades, the Pakistani Shia community has been subjected to brutal sectarian violence.
On November 21, a Shia procession honoring the death of Hazrat Fatima, the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter, was targeted by unknown gunmen, killing 44 civilians, including women and children, in Kurram District’s capital of Parachinar in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the attack. Parachinar, where 45% of the population is Shia, has endured repeated acts of violence, including the devastating twin blasts in 2017 that claimed over 100 lives.
Over the decades, sectarian violence in the country has manifested in multiple forms, ranging from mass killings through bombings to targeted shootings. Sometimes sectarian violence originates as a land dispute. In July of this year, a property dispute turned into an armed conflict between Sunni and Shia tribes, claiming 43 lives. They also take the form of target killings of prominent and successful Shia individuals, such as the one Dr. Fatima lost her husband and 12-year-old son to. She is, of course, not alone.
Protected by tall iron gates, the Wadi-e-Hussain graveyard in Karachi is home to the remains of hundreds of Shia victims who have been killed in targeted attacks over the years. It stands as a solemn reminder of sectarian violence in the country. The cemetery is filled with graves of families who were killed in attacks like the 2013 Abbas Town bombing that killed over 45 people, including a mother and her four-year-old child.
The Cost of Sectarian Violence
Pakistan is home to over 40 million Shia Muslims out of the country’s total population of 240 million. Over 4000 Shias have been killed by sectarian violence in the past 20 years alone.
In 2012, a suicide bombing at a Shia procession in Rawalpindi killed at least 20 people, marking one of the many sectarian attacks during commemorations in the sacred month of Muharram. The doubly oppressed Hazara Shia community in Quetta — marginalized based on both sect and ethnicity — has faced devastating attacks, such as the twin bombings in 2013 that killed over 200 people. These attacks were claimed by the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). In 2013, Dr. Syed Ali Haider, a renowned ophthalmologist, and his 12-year-old son, Ali Murtaza, were shot dead in Lahore while on their way to school. This targeted killing sent shockwaves through the medical community and exposed the vulnerability of prominent Shias.
Years later, I was conversing with a young man at a social gathering when he mentioned that he, too, had lost a sibling. To my surprise, he revealed that he was the surviving elder son of Dr. Haider. In 2015, during Friday prayers, a suicide bomber targeted a Shia mosque in Shikarpur, Sindh, killing 61 people. The act underscored the ever-present fear Shia Muslims in Pakistan must live under, even within their own places of worship. Terrorist group Jundullah, which has ties to the Pakistani Taliban and has pledged allegiance to ISIS, claimed responsibility for the attack.
A Homeland for (Some) Muslims
Anyone with even a basic understanding of Pakistan — founded as the world’s only Muslim homeland — might find it deeply perplexing that Muslims in this nation often face such profound insecurity. How did this tragically ironic fate come to pass?
Many believe that Pakistan’s escalating struggles with sectarian violence, particularly targeting Shias, can be traced back to the 1980s when military dictator Zia-ul-Haq introduced his “Islamisation” policies. Rooted in ultra-Orthodox interpretations of Sunni religious doctrine, these policies are largely remembered in Pakistan for their devastating impact on women. However, what is often overlooked— especially by privileged Sunnis like myself — is the profound harm they inflicted on minorities, including Shia Muslims, who comprise roughly 10% of Pakistan’s population.
These policies were also allegedly accompanied by state patronage of militant groups like Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), which openly declared Shias as heretics who ought not to be counted as part of the ummah or Muslim world. The most notorious of these militant groups were the Mujahideen, trained by the U.S. and the Pakistan government to serve as a proxy during the Soviet-Afghan war. The Mujahideen went on to become the Taliban, which has claimed responsibility for taking hundreds of Shia lives. The increasingly intolerant and Sunni-supremacist climate allowed other extremist outfits like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to rise to power. LeJ has since been responsible for numerous mass-casualty attacks targeting Shias, such as bombings in marketplaces, places of worship, and educational institutions.
Pakistan has paid the price for international rivalries more than once due to its own geopolitical position. The Iran-Saudi Arabia proxy conflict has deeply influenced Pakistan’s sectarian landscape. Saudi’s funding of Sunni seminaries and groups has amplified anti-Shia rhetoric, while Iran’s support for Shia organizations has further polarized communities.
Another major contributor to division is the complicity of the state, which has been under covert or overt military control for almost the entire history of the country itself. While simply turning a blind eye to sectarian violence is in and of itself unforgivable, it is even more shameful that many of the killers of innocent Shia men, women, and children are covertly funded by the Pakistani state, oftentimes because they are perceived as useful assets in internal politics. Prosecution rates for sectarian crimes remain abysmally low.
If Pakistan is to effectively counter the ongoing climate of fear and violence against millions of its citizens, it must take a multi-faceted approach. The government must address its failure to protect minorities and take a firm stance by enforcing laws against hate speech, dismantling extremist networks, and holding perpetrators accountable. It is evident that, for decades, minorities have been treated like political pawns by the state instead of citizens worthy of the state’s protection. Education reform is critical to counter sectarian narratives and promote religious tolerance and social harmony. On the grassroots level, social media has emerged as a powerful platform for advocacy and is used extensively by Pakistani netizens to draw national and international attention to this crisis. Such online campaigns amplify marginalized voices and pressure the state to act.
However, social media awareness must translate into actionable policy changes and act as an anathema to public apathy about the plight of Shia Muslims. Only through a combination of state responsibility, grassroots activism, and societal reform, can Pakistan truly become a safe homeland for Muslims of all sects.
(Yusra Amjad is a poet, comedienne, consultant, and activist from Lahore, Pakistan. She graduated with an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College on a Fulbright scholarship. Her writing has been featured by Vice Media, Amnesty International, and Oxfam International.)