The first instinct of a discredited regime is not to answer dissent but to classify it. Name the dissenter. Isolate the constituency. Shrink the grievance. In Pakistan, that machinery is again being deployed with familiar malice: mass outrage at imperial war is being recoded as sectarian agitation, and a security state aligned with Washington and the House of Saud is presenting itself as the custodian of national order.

The reported message to Shia clerics was blunt: if you love Iran so much, go to Iran. It was not the language of strength. It was the language of a frightened and servile ruling bloc that cannot politically answer opposition to the US-Israeli war on Iran and therefore seeks to criminalise, intimidate, and stigmatize it.

Only an intellectually exhausted establishment hears political outrage and responds with a loyalty test. Only a regime hollowed out by dependency imagines citizenship belongs exclusively to the obedient.

Only an intellectually exhausted establishment hears political outrage and responds with a loyalty test. Only a regime hollowed out by dependency imagines citizenship belongs exclusively to the obedient.

What is at issue is not theology. It is power. Who rules Pakistan, in whose interests, and under whose shadow? The ruling elite understands perfectly well that it is not facing a narrowly sectarian reaction. It is facing something far more dangerous to its survival: the possibility that Pakistanis across sectarian........

© Middle East Monitor