01/16/2021
Editorial
Much of the world has been focused on the now controlled chaos happening in the United States, but we cannot let just one controversy distract us while the ugly face of ISIS returns. This week, 11 members of the Hazara community in Pakistan were brutally murdered by these terrorists. The attack happened an hour’s drive from Quetta. Despite the killings, despite ISIS claiming responsibility, and despite the fact that these innocent victims have not even been buried yet, the world has done nothing. We have done nothing.
It is a sad truth that many of our community do not know the tragic history of the Hazara community, despite the decades of tragedy and oppression they have faced. They are primarily Shia, and ethnically a distinct group. For these reasons, and more, the Hazara have suffered severe oppression and many ethnic massacres, genocides and pogroms that were carried out by the Taliban and others in the last century. In one nightmarish incident, after killing approximately 10,000 civilians, the Taliban declared their goal to kill every member of the Hazara community.
While these facts are documented by such groups the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the Muslim community around the world has been silent. This cannot continue.
I ask each and every person to make a social media post about Hazara who have died this week, and recite Fateha in their homes. Abominable groups like ISIS thrive in the shadows, growing only because the world ignores them, because we falsely believed they were defeated and gone. They are not, so let us all shine a light on them and point out their destructive ways.