One of my neighbors has gotten a bull. It is not just the usual run of the mill, medium-sized animal either, this one is big – bigger than I am and frolics in the area because after all it would be pretty cruel for the owners to keep him locked up. A few nights ago, this bull caused a huge ruckus, he deemed it cool to play around with the dumpster in the middle of the night and knocked it over on the road with a large metallic sound. Now ours is a peaceful neighborhood and has been for a long, long time. Which means everyone sleeps early; there are no loud noises at night and so on. Therefore, obviously when such a ruckus was heard the local media was duly alerted. The media being efficient as it is put on some local experts to assess the situation with statements like “what is the current scenario” and “who do you think is responsible?”
The experts attributed this noise which rattled many a window but did not break any to have all the hallmarks of an al Qaeda attack. They compared the noise of the incident to the bombing incident in Bali and the other acts of terrorism around the world the nefarious organization is responsible for. One of the experts pointed out that because of the conspicuousness of foreign breeds; local bulls are now being recruited by al Qaeda to carry out home grown plots of terrorism. Another toted the fact that now even “peaceful forever” neighborhoods like mine had been infiltrated by agents of the damned and thus no place was safe anymore. The local political representative of my area appeared on TV and asked everyone to stay at home till a full grasp of the situation was attained by the emergency response services. While all this was going on, social media starting buzzing about eye witness accounts of this bull; he had been up to no good again and was chasing cars around the neighborhood in the day. There were reports on twitter about him causing a ruckus in the mosque in the lane behind us and more strangely, of one of his horns sporting a cross. At these reports, the local broadcast media again went into a tizzy and some experts vehemently pointed out that just because he wore a cross we could not rule out the fact that al Qaeda was behind it all. They also likened his chasing these cars around to have echoes of the Mumbai attacks, and some rag in Britain even rolled out the grand “al Qaeda responsible for attacks in neighborhood of peace headline,” albeit in quotes so as to avoid any unkindly legal action. Finally yesterday, the authorities nabbed this monster. The fact about the cross has turned out to be true but now, no one is claiming ownership of the beast. Its become obvious that because he seems to be a member of a right wing Christian mentality he must have been working alone to indulge in this terror. After all the entire neighborhood knows from reading everything they can, that it is only Muslim bulls who frolic in herds and are supported by huge organizations with unlimited funds and tentacles reaching into every cave in Afghanistan. What a sad state of affairs the weekend has turned out to be, so much carnage and the responsible party working alone and being Christian has just dampened the spirit of the whole thing. We must now say no to the mercenaries we had thought of employing around our lanes and stop the intended drone strikes in the more religious neighborhood across the bridge. This was just a farce and a complete waste of time, no war can be started on someone working alone … what a pity.
The writer is not attempting to trivialize the tragedy which occurred in Norway. He is just pointing out the fact that all roads do not lead to Rome now-a-days and that Muslim is not equal to terrorist.
Faisal Kapadia is a writer/blogger based in Karachi.
The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.