From Quetta, Dec 10, 2013: ASWJ-SSP bullying in name of religion

The truth behind the ‘blasphemy’ incident featuring fruit crates allegedly wrapped in pages of the Holy Quran, account received from Quetta (name withheld for security reasons):

In the early hours of 10th Dec, 2013, as usual, I heard a blast with big bang, followed by firing on Alamdar Road Quetta, where majority of residents hail from Hazara community.

According to news reports, cartons of fruit on a truck coming from Iran were found wrapped with pages of Holy Quran. Interestingly, ASWJ, the legal wing of the banned Sipah Sahaba, was the first one to get an ‘inkling’ about this. Soon afterwards, as a part of their ‘religious duty’, SSP workers rallied around Alamdar Road, stoned the area indiscriminately and burnt flags of Hazara Democratic Party mounted on residential walls, chanting slogans “Kafir kafir Shia kafir”. Then they started burning shops of the Hazara community and damaging property. In response, around 100 Hazara men returned fire, attempting to protect their property. The prolonged crossfire between them resulted in some causalities.



After an in-depth probe from police and home department authorities, it was established that the fruit cartons were wrapped in pages printed with Persian and Arabic writing — not Quranic verses. The Arabic writing was taken as “verses of Holy Quran” by illiterate ‘jihadi’ (fasadi, rather) SSP workers. It reminds me of a famous proverb “Ignorance is the mother of violence”.

The question arises that even if food imported from Iran was wrapped with pages of holy Quran, would that justify attacking innocent Shias living on Alamdar Road? The civilised thing to do would have go in front of the Iranian consulate and record a protest there.



In Quetta, with the support of foreign agencies – mostly from Middle East monarchies, the jihadi mullahs are bent upon killing innocent Shia Muslims on one pretext or the other. They preach hate through social and print media. A greater irony is that most of print media tycoons like daily Jang, Express news, and sarkari akhbars provide a special corner in their newspapers to such mass murderers, giving Sarkari Musalman (official Muslims) more space to spread their venom against a particular sect.

On the one hand this, and on the other hand, the attempts of certain powers, supported by Saudi funding, nt to halt the Gawader Port project and the proposed Pakistan Iran gas pipeline by turning Baluchistan either into a separate independent country or at least into Syria like anarchy.

Educated Pakistanis must stand up and guard their homeland against such interventions and the morphing of Pakistan into “Al-Bakistan”. With the rapid escalating of extremists and allowing banned outfits to function it is becoming necessary for ordinary citizens (Kafirs) to flee the country.