So I’m waiting for members of my husband’s family who live in Lahore to check in. No one, not even those living in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, or Karachi have heard from them.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A powerful blast ripped through a public park in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Sunday evening, killing at least 52 people and wounding at least 200, including women and children, rescue workers and officials said.
The blast, apparently caused by a suicide bomber, occurred in a parking lot at Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park, one of the largest parks in Lahore, the capital of Punjab Province, said Haider Ashraf, a senior police official in Lahore.
The park is frequented both by residents and visitors to the city, and is popular with families. — NYT
The newest count is 60+, The bomb went off near a children’s play set area, in a park full of people celebrating Easter. Even Muslims in Pakistan celebrate Easter and Christmas with their Christian friends and family members.
Muslims, and minorities living in Muslim lands, are most often the victims of terrorists. Terrorist we inspired, trained and/or created. But we only seem to care when a bomb is detonated in Europe or here in on the North American continent.
I know that level of “care” all too well when the floods hit Pakistan. LaughingPlanet, Aji, Patriot News Clearing House, JaxDem, noweasels, passionateprotagonist, rexymeteorite, WarrenS, and more, worked hard here at DK to fundraise for relief. Even here I heard “Pakistan is full of terrorists, fuck em.” And I posted pictures of my in-laws engaged in relief work as part of being members of the Rotary in response.
We wonder why there is a raising tide of Islamphobia. Maybe if we started paying as much attention to the terrorist bombs going off in Muslim lands and treated these victims with the same care, humanity and sympathy, and insist that others do too, that we do for Paris, Belgium, etc. we might stem that rising tide. We are all in this together.
But right now I’m just waiting, WE are just waiting for word on our regular, everyday, non-terrorist, people just like you, friends and family members to check in.
Belgium had 31 people killed in a terrorist bomb. Pakistan has twice that number (60+ and counting), will the world care?
Sunday, Mar 27, 2016 · 8:42:10 PM +00:00 · Clytemnestra
Dawn (English language newspaper inside Pakistan) just updated 15 minutes ago
LAHORE: At least 69 people were killed in a suicide attack in Gulshan-i-Iqbal Park of Iqbal Town on Sunday evening, rescue sources said. Hospital sources added that over 250 were injured.
The attack was claimed by the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan Jamaatul Ahrar. — Dawn
Sunday, Mar 27, 2016 · 9:33:20 PM +00:00 · Clytemnestra
Members of the Christian community who were celebrating Easter today were our prime target," the spokesman said.
Asked if women and children were their target as most of those killed in the blast included women and children, the Taliban spokesman said they were not on their list.
"We didn't want to kill women and children. Our targets were male members of the Christian community," Ehsan said. He said this was the first of series of attacks they had planned this year in different parts of the country.
- NBC News
This is bullshit on so many levels. The first being the hadith quoted in the tweet above. Second, third . . . 152nd:
It was a park — on Sunday — which is the only real weekend day there is in Pakistan.
Why did the suicide bomber detonate near the play area? If it wasn’t a primary target it was a secondary or tertiary target. (because otherwise it would have been better to abort the attack).
To target men in a over arching patriarchal society means that you also condemn women and children to death. . . not a fast one, but one where there isn’t enough food, shelter can’t be paid for, hard work for even the smallest hands in dangerous conditions. This is especially true if the male group targeted is likely to be all the adult males of an entire family (what we call nuclear and extended) — which is more than likely the case of families getting together to celebrate Easter. The death of the breadwinner, and the death of those in the family who can step in the gap means death for the dependents.
The point is women and children were still a target.
Since there were Muslim families in the park enjoying their only weekend day(off) too . . . I need a stronger word than bullshit.