Venceremos! We shall overcome

Trashing our law enforcers is counterproductive, to say the least. It's fashionable in certain circles, but it's a suicidal fashion. See how brave the Marriott's security boys, official and private were as the smoking, spluttering bomb was about to explode? One even tried to put out the fire with an extinguisher! Not one ran away. They died because they chose to, to save others. That's the stuff a real Muslim is made of. Would those who run them down so fashionably behave so bravely, those who wear millions of rupees worth of apparel and accoutrements on their bodies? They have too much material to lose. Can those who wear ties worth more than our per capita income know what sacrifice is? Who else is going to fight for us except our soldiers, sailors, airmen, police and paramilitary? They are from amongst us, not from Mars. Imagine how they feel when those very people whom they are laying down their lives for belittle them. How do you think the families of these martyrs feel, the mothers who willingly send their sons to die for us? Real heroes, they are the real shaheeds as defined in Islam, but do they get even a mandatory nod? Do they have parks and roads named after them? Soon they are forgotten and their families will... I won't even mention it. It is edifying that the hotel's owner has publicly promised to look after them forever, showing that not all the rich and powerful are heartless morons.

Stand united with your government, any government, on issues of national survival. Draw the line between national survival and national damage. Opposing government on issues like the shortage of flour is your right, but don't impede it in our fight for survival. Disagree certainly, dissent vociferously, but provide sensible solutions too. It's easy to criticise when you're not in the hot seat. Remember, if our government fails in this fight, we all lose.

Learn from your mistakes. Correct your strategies. Mulishly pursuing a losing course is tantamount to fortifying failure - the height of stupidity. America's policies have failed. So have ours. It's time America reviewed them and its relationship with its allies before the world goes up in flames. George Bush has finally admitted, too late alas, that America needs to review its strategy in Afghanistan. So do we. Force has failed. Deals have too. We have to win this war with ideas, better and more attractive than the terrorists' ideas - "We will bring shariah in the land." Say, "We will bring real Islam and God's real law in the land, starting with Haqooq ul Ibad, the Rights of God's Creation." And do it fast. Then see which idea attracts people more.

Distinguish between real friends and friends with daggers up their sleeves. Confuse them at your peril. That this war is also somebody else's is supremely irrelevant. What's important is that it is our war, whether you like it or not. If we dump America or it withdraws, the war against us will intensify, for the terrorists would get a confidence boost. Liberating Afghanistan is the right of every Afghan. We suffered terrorism even before 9/11. If we choose to fight a common enemy together, it doesn't mean we are fighting America's war. Actually, it is they who are fighting our war, for we are terrorism's greatest victims. The terrorists' ultimate objective is to impose their own twisted version of Islam on us and everyone else, without ijma or consensus. We have to fight terrorism in our midst whether America does or not, to save our country from the dark abyss of the obscurant who hijacked our religion after we abdicated genuine scholarship and left the space vacant for him to occupy.

While non-state terrorists have penetrated our society at the bottom, state terrorists have at the top. Pakistani sympathisers and agents in obscurant garb are enabling the former; Pakistani sympathisers and agents in liberal garb are enabling the latter. Both are supported by the ideologically confused. While our governments are swamped, our enemies are chipping away at the very edifice of our state.