No media outlet, not even General Kiani dared name Taliban even when Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack. Instead, the government is offering Rs 100 million for providing information about the attackers

Young Malala Yousafzai was attacked by two members of the “Pakistani Taliban” who shot her at close range with automatic weapons. Her crime is that she wanted to get educated and advocated the same for her class mates and other friends.

But according to the Taliban and other ‘defenders’ of Islam, this is a crime punishable by death. They know that educated girls will not accept violent, destructive and discriminatory Islamic ideology of Taliban.

Whereas people around the civilized world are horrified to watch TV pictures of the almost lifeless body of a young girl being rushed to hospital, Pakistani folks are simply praying for her full recovery.

However, the frequency of such incidents during the past few years alone, stand witness that in today’s Pakistan, school children, women and minorities – Muslims and non-Muslims alike, are facing such death squads on daily basis.

It was only recently that a young Christian girl of the same age as that of Malala while bundled into blankets, was pushed into a dark and dingy jail cell and put under the “ protective police custody”.

The same Taliban and other self proclaimed ‘defenders of the honour of Islam or the Prophet” were ready to kill her for insulting the Holy Quran. Now we know that a local religious zealot actually planted a few burnt pages of the Quran in her bag and then falsely accused her of that horrible crime.

This poor child is still hiding somewhere as she is still in danger of loosing her life. However, the bearded local ‘imam’ has not yet been put on trial under Pakistan’s harsh but illegal and absurd ‘blasphemy laws’.

A few months earlier, a young Christian woman went through hell jut because few other women heard her ‘insulting the Prophet of Islam’. And then, when the Governor of Pakistan’s largest province, Punjab, late Salman Taseer, expressed publicly his intentions to help the poor woman, he was publicly gunned down by his own bodyguard.

Soon after that, a member of Pakistan’s federal Cabinet and the only minister of Christian faith, late Mr. Shahbaz Bhatti, was  assassinated. So far, all these criminal cases have neither been fully investigated nor culprits brought to justice.

In addition, numerous foreign based and home grown terrorist groups and criminal gangs have been playing havoc with the daily safety and security of common folks across Pakistan. These terrorists are also infiltrating and attacking Pakistan’s two neighbouring countries, Afghanistan and India. The attack by Pakistan-based terrorists on hotels in Mumbai cost 160 lives and enormous damage to public and private property.

Pakistani or Afghani ’Taliban’ have also been given free pass to blow up mosques full of worshippers, churches, Hindu temples, police stations, markets, schools, shopping centres and many other public places. Taliban have launched a number of successful armed attacks on highly sensitive and heavily fortified military, naval and air force bases located in various location.

Now young, very intelligent and hard working Malala has been attacked, critically wounded and she is fighting for her life. One would expect that at least this time more than 180 million people of Pakistan will finally wake up and pour out in the streets demanding that their government must protect their lives or should resign.

But more specifically who so frequently show their ‘love for the Prophet’ by murdering their own people, attacking foreign diplomats and burning embassy and consulate buildings of the US and other Western countries, should come out and flex their muscle. Unfortunately, the responses which so far have come out of Pakistan can only be described as cowardly, dishonest and even foolish.

For instance:

1. The Prime Minister of Pakistan says that Malala is the “daughter of Pakistan”. [But so was the 14 years old Reshma.]

2. The Commander-in-Chief of Pakistan army while visiting the critically injured girl is reported to have said that “Pakistan’s armed forces will not bow before the terrorists”. [But these very people have successfully attacked military basis, even the GHQ. We haven’t seen Pak army standing up to these ‘terrorists’!]

3. No media outlet, not even General Kiani or his ISPR have dared name Taliban even when Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack on Malala. Instead, the government is offering 100 million rupees for any one providing information about the people who attacked Malala.

It is time that the military and political elite of Pakistan must stop deceiving the world and especially the people of Pakistan.