Although it was not the first incident of violence against the Shia Muslims of Pakistan, this attack is considered to be the first major massacre of civilians in the Sindh.
Muhammad Isma’il wrote, ‘a true believer should regard the breaking of a tazia by force to be as virtuous an action as destroying idols.
If this even be out of his power, let him at least detest and abhor them with his whole heart and soul’.Sayyid Ahmad himself is said, no doubt with considerable exaggeration, to have torn down thousands of imambaras, the building that house the taziyahs".
[5] After their death in Balakot in 1831 while being chased by Maharaja Ranjit Singh's army, their legacy of sectarian terrorism continued in the Deoband school of thought.
Data shows that around 90 percent of religious terrorists in Pakistan are Deobandis by faith and many of them belong to the Pashtun belt (the area where Syed Ahmad carried out his military endeavor).
[7] The main religious centers of Muslims in that time were located in the United Provinces, therefore, the sectarian violence spread all over India.
They indicate what might happen if the government did not keep the situation under control: ‘adequate measures avert incidents’, ‘Muharram passed off peacefully’, ‘All shops remained closed in .
Birdwood says that, in Bombay, where the first four days of Muharram are likely to be devoted to visiting each other's tabut khanas, women and children, as well as men, are admitted, and members of other communities – only the Sunnies are denied ‘simply as a police precaution’".
[7] Now Deobandi ulema changed tactics: in 1944 they established a separate organization to do the dirty work, Tanzim-e-Ahle-Sunnat, solely focused on the anti-Shia violence [9] and the main leaders like Madani started to present themselves as inclusive secularists again.
Archives and history books of Mughal period have lots of material about opposition leaders, e.g. Shiva Ji, but there is no mention of Ahmad Sirhindi.
After the demise of Jinnah in mysterious circumstances, the feudal prime minister, Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan, allied with Deobandi ulema and passed the Objectives Resolution and adopted the puritanical Wahhabism as state religion.
Shias allege discrimination by the Pakistani government since 1948, claiming that Sunnis are given preference in business, official positions and administration of justice.
[11] Although the sectarian hateful literature had been pouring into Punjab since Shah Abd al-Aziz wrote his Tuhfa Asna Ashariya, however, anti-Shia violence began only after mass migration in 1947.
In the 1950s, Tanzim-e-Ahle-Sunnat started to arrange public gatherings all over Pakistan to incite violence and mock Shia sanctities.
In 1956, thousands of armed villagers gathered to attack Azadari in the small town of Shahr Sultan, but were stopped by Police from killing.
Blaming the victim, TAS demanded that government should ban the thousand years old tradition of Azadari, because it caused rioting and bloodshed.
[16] On the other hand, Mufti Mahmood, Molana Samiul Haq, Ihsan Illahi Zaheer and others wrote and spoke furiously against Shias.
The global Shia religious leader of the time, Grand Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim, wrote a letter to President Mohammad Ayub Khan expressing his strong condemnation of the act.