The tragic experiment that began in 1947 under the flawed banner of the ‘Two Nation Theory’ has finally reached its logical and catastrophic conclusion in the form of a state that is neither a nation nor a democracy but a sprawling theological asylum. While India marched toward the stars with its sophisticated space programs and robust economic prowess, its neighbour chose to stagnate in the medieval shadows of religious weaponisation, turning a faith that should have been a personal solace into a lethal instrument of statecraft and social coercion. This descent into the communal abyss was not accidental but was a calculated choice made by a military establishment that realised early on that it could never compete with India on the grounds of merit, secularism or development. To justify its own existence and the massive drain it imposes on a hollowed-out economy, the Pakistani deep state manufactured an existential identity based entirely on religious friction and the pathological hatred of its more successful neighbour. The foundational myth that Hindus and Muslims could not coexist was successfully rejected by the millions of Indian Muslims who chose a secular democracy over a sectarian desert, yet this myth became the toxic oxygen that Pakistan continues to breathe even as it chokes on its own radicalisation.
The institutionalisation of this bigotry found its most fervent architect in the form of General Zia-ul-Haq, who effectively traded the soul of the country for a military-mullah alliance that continues to haunt the region today. By introducing the Hudood Ordinances and weaponising blasphemy laws, Zia created a legal framework where the state itself became the primary persecutor of its own citizens. This era saw the birth of the infamous Jihad Industry, where militant proxies were systematically groomed, trained and deployed as low-cost pawns in a cynical game of strategic depth. The world now watches as this policy of nurturing good militants to target India and Afghanistan has collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, leading to a brutal internal blowback where the monsters created in Rawalpindi have turned their fangs toward their own masters. This is the inevitable fate of a state that treats terrorism as an instrument of diplomacy and jihad as a substitute for a genuine national vision. The transition from a frontline state in the Cold War to what the world increasingly recognises as a global terror factory is a testament to the failure of a ruling elite that values ideological purity over human life.
The most visible and horrific manifestation of this religious weaponisation is the blasphemy industrial complex, a system where the mere whisper of an accusation serves as a de facto death sentence. In contemporary Pakistan, the law of the jungle has been codified into the penal code, allowing organised criminal groups to use sections like 295-C as tools for extortion, land grabbing and personal vendetta. The tragic cases of individuals like Asia Bibi and Mashal Khan are not isolated incidents but are symptomatic of a society that has been conditioned to celebrate vigilante justice. When a university student like Mashal Khan is lynched by his own peers on a campus, it signals the total collapse of the intellectual and moral fabric of the nation. This culture of lynching is further emboldened by the rise of populist extremist groups like the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, which has successfully held the state hostage through sheer street power and the glorification of assassins. The fact that the highest judiciary in the land recently bowed to the threats of these mobs in the Mubarak Sani case, deleting parts of a legal judgment to appease the religious right, proves that the writ of the state has been surrendered to the clerics.
For the religious minorities who remain in this increasingly intolerant landscape, life is a cycle of systemic discrimination and physical peril. The Ahmadiyya community has been subjected to a form of civil death, where they are legally barred from practicing their faith and are disenfranchised through separate electoral lists that target them for further persecution. Hindus and Christians face the constant threat of forced conversions, where young girls are abducted and married off under the
protective gaze of local seminaries and complicit police officials. This is the reality of a country that once promised to protect its minorities but has instead turned into a graveyard for pluralism. The shrinking percentage of non-Muslims in Pakistan is a silent indictment of a state that has spent decades conducting an ideological cleansing of its population. While India remains a mosaic of diverse cultures and faiths, Pakistan has become a monotonous and dangerous monolith where even different sects of Islam are engaged in a bloody struggle for dominance.
The radicalisation of the youth is perhaps the most irreversible damage inflicted by this weaponisation, as the education system has been turned into a conveyor belt for extremist thought. Through the Single National Curriculum and hate filled textbooks, generations of children are being taught that honesty is a virtue only for Muslims and that non-Muslims are inherently untrustworthy or enemies of the state. These books do not just teach religion; they teach a version of history that is distorted by polemics and a future that is centred on the glorification of jihad. By infusing religious dogma into every subject from Urdu to Science, the state is effectively killing the critical thinking skills of its youth, leaving them vulnerable to the recruitment efforts of militant organisations. This manufactured intolerance ensures that the cycle of violence will continue long after the current generation of leaders has passed, as the seeds of discord have been sown deeply into the minds of the smallest children.
Economically, the cost of this religious obsession has been devastating, reducing a once promising country to a perennial beggar at the doors of the International Monetary Fund and other global lenders. The frequent shutdowns caused by religious protests, the loss of billions in infrastructure damage and the flight of technocratic talent are all direct consequences of choosing a theological path over a rational one. The international community, led by the astute observations of Indian diplomacy, has begun to see through the facade of a state that claims to be a victim of terror while remaining its primary sponsor. The term Terroristan is no longer just a rhetorical label but is a functional description of a country that uses nuclear blackmail to shield its terror infrastructure from international scrutiny. The exit from the FATF grey list was a temporary reprieve that has not addressed the underlying networks of groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which continue to operate under different names with the tacit support of the deep state.
Pakistan serves as a cautionary tale of what happens when a state uses religion as a weapon to cover its institutional failures and to divert the attention of its people from their own misery. The weaponisation of faith has not made the country more pious or more secure; it has instead rendered it a fragile and lawless entity that is increasingly isolated on the world stage. India, as a stable and democratic power, remains the primary target of this weaponised ideology because its very existence as a successful pluralistic state is a living refutation of the Two Nation Theory. The continued sponsorship of proxy wars and the infiltration of low-grade terror across the border are the desperate actions of a regime that knows its own foundational myths are crumbling. As the internal security situation deteriorates and the economy continues to implode, the Pakistani establishment will likely double down on religious rhetoric to maintain its grip on power. However, the world is finally realising that a state built on the shaky foundations of hate and religious extremism cannot endure indefinitely without consuming itself from within. The internal combustion of Pakistan is not a question of if but a question of when, as the fire of radicalisation that it started to burn its neighbours has now reached its own doorstep. One can only hope that the global community continues to hold this belligerent state accountable before its self-inflicted religious furies lead to a wider regional catastrophe.