Pakistan is going through a decisive moment in its history. While the elites of power can claim credit to shape this turning point, it is the weight of the historical legacies and the rotation of the global and regional geopolitics that are more decisive.
These are trial times, not only for the State, but for the mentality that governs decision making. The options made will now determine not only the future of those in power but also the trajectory of the nation.
Decision making in Pakistan is not separated from socio -political and cultural foundations. Elites, civil, military and religious, have built identities for a long time around faith, using it as much as a political tool as a control mechanism. This has led to a peculiar paradox: religion unfolds to mobilize, but faith -based speech is often left intact, even in areas where it could lead to a social collapse or violence. Over time, a worldview has emerged, isolated from global values and even diverging from conventional Muslim thinking in other places, which sees dissent as sacrilege and doubt as betrayal.
A recent decision of a judge of the Superior Court of Islamabad (IHC) to order an investigation commission on the misuse of blasphemy laws is a rare opening.
Allows the State to correct the course. However, the reaction of religious uncomproments and clergy segments suggests that the path ahead will be turbulent. Instead of facing the facts, the accused parties try to press the Judiciary and twist the narrative, spread the misinformation and issue the commission as an attack on section 295-C, despite the fact that the court did not explicitly made such a connection. Its objective is clear: to delegate the process and maintain its control over a narrative that thrives with fear.
The lawyer Imaan Zainab Mazari rightly pointed out that if there was no dirty game, why fear? The court simply ordered an investigation into the possible collusion between certain FIA officials and private plaintiffs, a necessary and legal step in a democratic society. But the reaction has been fierce. The victims and their defenders are being threatened. Religious fans, emboldened by the silence of the State and the indifference of religious scholars, continue to act impunity.
We are trapped in a situation that many other nations have faced but collectively surpassed.
Pakistan is caught in a situation that many other nations have faced, but have ultimately overcome through collective effort. A close historical parallel is the case of the American senator Joseph McCarthy in the late 1950s. The anti -communist feeling exploded to silence the dissidents of society, qualifying them as enemies of the State and attacking artists, intellectuals and members of civil society in the process. Their actions ruined races and even charged lives.
The fall of McCarthy began when he turned his crusade against the US military heroes, which brought him closer to the accusation. Although his campaign was finally discredited and ended, the damage it caused was widespread. The term ‘McCarthyism’ now refers to this era of ideological and ideological persecution.
It is worth mentioning other episodes where myths, armed through state and religious institutions, led to mass persecution. The most horrible refers to European witch hunts from the 16th and 17th centuries. As Yuval Noah Harari points out in his recent work NexusThe myth of witches transformed suspicion into systemic violence. What began as dispersed accusations became legal doctrine, enabled by courts and monarchs, and consumed entire communities. Women, particularly healers and midwives, were attacked, tortured and burned, simply because fear had been institutionalized.
Europe finally receded from the edge of hysteria. The monarchs such as Frederick II of Prussia and Louis XIV of France helped reduce witch judgments through legal reforms and the influence of rationalist thinking. The Church, once complicit, began to distance himself from practice, since the witch fighters caused more and more broken into the Christian faith. It worked to deconstruct the stories that had fed the persecution, recognizing the damage that these judgments inflicted both society and faith.
Ironically, the Inquisition was sometimes more restricted than local courts, which tended to act for fear and popular pressure and on the basis of the rumor. Over time, the values of the Enlightenment gained ground, emphasizing reason, legal restriction and human dignity. But these changes occurred only after the entire regions had been marked by collective hysteria, cruelty sanctioned by the State and institutionalized repression.
If this silence continues, Pakistan runs the risk of descending even more in a state of perpetual fear, where beliefs are no longer a source of spiritual guidance, but are used as a tool to accuse and coerce. The cost will not only be paid by the victims of the accusations of blasphemy, but by society in general, producing an atrophied generation, devoid of critical and blocked thought in a cycle of moral panic.
This moment is a test. Not only of institutions, but of the national will. Will the State and society go back? Can courage call to break this cycle and claim a future based on justice, dignity and truth?
Toxic narratives drain the energies of nations, erode their social fabric and weakened institutions. Overcoming such narratives requires collective resolution, honesty and consistent action. While other countries have faced and dismantled similar ideological threats through calculation and national reform, Pakistan has not yet demonstrated such commitment.
Despite producing political documents and establishing anti -terrorist centers in each province, these initiatives often serve as smoke cuts instead of leading real solutions. They provide the illusion of progress, while the deepest ideological challenges remain without addressing. Power elites are in denial or lack the courage to initiate a unified and significant response.
Crucially, there is no comparable effort directed by the State to counteract extremism on legal, political or ideological fronts. Legal reforms are absent, religious leadership remains a large passive extent and the intellectual resistance of the main religious current is minimal. Even those that are presented as moderate or rational voices within the religious sphere remain silent, trapped between fear, institutional pressure and quiet complicity.
The writer is security analyst.
Posted in Dawn, July 20, 2025
