Guarding Education

The year is 2016. A complete fifteen years since the fateful 9/11 episode. Pervaiz Musharraf claims that he was threatened by the American government that if Pakistan does not agree to all the military, intelligence and logistic support that America required to strike war in Afghanistan, Pakistan would be returned to the stone ages. Some reliable sources deny Musharraf receiving any such threats.

It does not matter either ways now. One way or the other, we have returned to the stone ages. We have scarce electricity, scarce gas and scarce water. As if this was not enough, we have conjured up an enemy for ourselves no smaller than a genie. As if India alone was not enough! It cannot be the wrath of America upon us, for we did as America bid. Surely, it must be the wrath of Allah Almighty, from among the three A’s – Allah, Army, America - may Allah Almighty forgive us for this equivalence.

Soon after the creation of Pakistan, as Quaid-e-Azam was appointing army units on the borders of Pakistan, he stopped at the North-Western border of Pakistan, which comprises FATA. It was a tribal belt of natural warriors. Quaid-e-Azam remarked that there was no need to place army units along the North-West border of Pakistan as the brave, loyal and daring tribes would defend the border as good as any army personnel.

And it happened so, until the fateful year 2001. After which, the land of loyals starting popping out suicide bombers. Starting out in 2007, they have targeted just about everything they can reach, including check posts, vehicles, markets, mosques and schools. We, the people of Pakistan, have been protesting ever since 2001 against Pakistan getting dragged into this dirty war, killing the unknown and facing the reaction. As the reaction started simmering, enemies to the existence of Pakistan rejoiced at the chaos and dirty terrorists from all over the world joined the game. We cringed for the drones in FATA and held baited breaths in fear of the time when the rest of Pakistan will come in the line of fire. And this is exactly what happened when the Peshawar Army Public School was attacked on 16^th December 2014. At last, the city children too were under attack. Only, this time cameras were allowed to photograph and film the baby corpses for the whole world to see.

So what will happen now? Will we stop sending our children to school?

Each new day we rise with new messages and posts on our mobiles informing whether our children’s school is open or not. On the morning of Thursday, January 28, 2016, about thirteen months after the APS massacre and a week after the attack in Charsadda University, one mother contemplated sending her children to school or not. The entire Pakistan was under severe security alert. Most of the schools had shut down. A handful had not. Her children’s school was one of them. What to do now?

She recalled how the Muslims had stopped sending their children to school about two hundred years ago, when the British had taken over the subcontinent, changed the academic language from Persian to English and designed a new syllabus for the Muslim children. As a protest, offended Muslims pulled out their children from schools.

She says. Why did not the Muslims get offended when their ‘Muslim’ leaders were wining, dining and wooing prostitutes? Why do we get offended by acts of non-Muslims only, for wrong is wrong in the Eyes of Allah Almighty, no matter who does it? Why do we react late? Why do we protest late? Why do we act late? Why do we act lame? What a shame!

We Muslims do not want to fall back another few hundred years again. We shall not stop sending our children to school. We shall struggle for education and progress on the measure of Jihad. There! Sorry to disappoint all those who have been attacking our children in the hope that we will sit back and set back and go to sleep for a few more hundred years.

A mother sitting outside her children’s school amidst high security threats, guarding the children in her own way. She could not make them miss school, and she could not sit at home, wondering whether the children will come home dead or alive.