A Nation Obsessed with the Aesthetics of Morality but Dead Inside

Let me ask you a series of questions. Answer them honestly—to yourself, not to me.

Would you ever knowingly contaminate milk with harmful chemicals and feed it to your own children?
Would you serve dead, haram meat at your table, knowing your parents or loved ones will eat it?
Would you steal millions—if not billions—of taxpayers’ money from the treasury just to enrich yourself and your friends?
Would you deliberately build a school system so weak that it turns your child into an oblivious, good-for-nothing shell—incapable of leadership or expertise?
Would you rape a minor? Would you rape anyone?
Would you send your underage son into the streets to earn, knowing he will be exploited, abused, or worse?
Would you, as a journalist, feed lies to your people every single day?
Would you, as a public servant, exploit your power to silence anyone who questions your incompetence?
Would you blackmail judges with their private lives caught on hidden cameras just to secure your tyrannical rule?

I hope your answer to all of these was no.

Now, let me ask you another set of questions:

Do you watch TV exposés with fascination?
Do you join local gatherings where everyone rants about corruption and injustice?
Do you post and comment on the misery of flood victims?
Do you sigh at headlines about child abuse, inflation, or terrorism?
Do you sympathize, get angry, maybe even shed a tear—but do nothing beyond that?

If your answer to the first series was no and to the second was yes, then I have news for you: you, me, and 250 million other Pakistanis are guilty of the same hypocrisy. We are addicted to the aesthetics of morality, emotions, outrage, and sympathy, but inside, we are dead. Completely dead.

And this is not an exaggeration. The facts speak louder than our excuses.

• In just the first six months of 2025, Pakistan reported 950 cases of child sexual abuse and over 600 abductions. Many of the accused remain unconvicted, walking free.
• From 2021 to mid-2025 in Islamabad alone, there were 567 rape cases; 200 of the victims were children. Yet only 12 convictions have been secured.
• Pakistan’s score on the Corruption Perceptions Index is 27/100, ranking us 135th out of 180 nations.
• One scandal in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa alone revealed alleged embezzlement of Rs 30–40 billion in public funds.
• Poverty is crushing us: nearly 45% of Pakistanis now live below the poverty line (US$4.20/day), and 16% live in extreme poverty. That’s over 107 million people.
• And every year, about 1,000 women are murdered in so-called “honor killings.”

We consume this misery every single day, amplified a hundred times by our media, and we scroll past it as if it’s entertainment. We’ve convinced ourselves that if tragedy doesn’t knock on our own door, it isn’t real.

We saw Pakistan unite in May 2025 when war with India loomed. But where is that unity when the enemy is within? Where is that fire when fuel prices rise, when justice is murdered in broad daylight, when corruption eats us alive? We do not resist. We do not demand accountability. We blame the victim. We rationalize the oppressor. We comfort ourselves by saying, It won’t happen to me.

This hypocrisy runs in our blood. In our homes, in our workplaces, in our politics. Each person commits injustice proportional to the power they hold and hides behind religion while doing so. Our liberals twist Islam to suit their narrative, our conservatives weaponize it for their power, our leaders exploit it for control, and the rest of us carry it around cluelessly, like a badge we never earned.

Let me be blunt: this is not Islam. And you and I—we are not Muslims. We are sadists, with a kink for tragedy, cowards who worship power. We pretend to hate oppression but secretly admire it. We rage at injustice but secretly wish for the chance to wield it ourselves.

If your blood doesn’t boil at this reality, then you are neither a Muslim nor a decent human being. You are simply another addict of tragedy, enjoying the spectacle while the nation dies.

Pakistan’s tragedy isn’t that we are oppressed. It’s that we love the poetry of resistance but hate the practice of it.