Yesterday morning I drove from one end of Islamabad to another, admiring the city’s lush greenery that adorns its every edge, the hills that kiss its corners, and I offered my gratitude to God for getting to call such a beautiful city, and beautiful country, home.

At the same time in the same city, during the sacred hour of the Friday prayer, a suicide bomber entered the Khadijah Tul Kubra mosque and killed 32 people, injuring 170+ more. Very quickly, I was reminded that to love a place does not mean that it will love you in return.

This is tragically just another example of systematic and normalized Shia massacres in Pakistan. This is nothing new: we are told from childhood that we must conceal our identity, for even our names carry targets. From Parachinar to Karachi, Shias are slowly suffocated and strangled, and then told to be silent about it. When we call it what it is, we’re told we’re being ‘divisive’ - but our killers, who murder us gleefully out of sectarian hatred, are somehow not.

But what all these extremists and their allies fail to understand is that Shiism in its very essence means to resist — we will continue to raise our alams on our rooftops, host our Muharram processions, and name our children Husayn and Zaynab. No bigot, bullet, or bomb can kill this truth ✌🏼

Pictured: 1) A 2015 protest in Sindh against Shia killings, courtesy Financial Times 2) Margalla Hills, my beautiful Islamabad