You have to wonder what it will take to bring this country together on one page. When the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar happened, the whole country stood together and said we won’t let this happen again. 141 souls were lost that day. They were future doctors, engineers, professors, politicians, soldiers, and officers. They were a part of our nation that we will never be able to reclaim again, no matter what we swear to do.

And yet, not a month and a half later, the nation is mourning the loss of 61 souls in an attack on an imambargah in Shikarpur. The only difference between the Army Public School attack and the imambaragh is these were not children, but the loss is just as great. Yet, somehow, the response to these deaths is very different that what we felt as a nation on December 16^th.

As a nation, we have lifted the coffins of over 70,000 people, sacrificed their souls to Allah as martyrs. But there are times when the attacks are just covered and there are times when they are given national significance. Why does it seem that some terrorist attacks in Pakistan are given more national grief that others? That is the question that has plagued my mind each time there is a terrorist attack in Pakistan.

Let’s set some basic understandings before we start this discussion.

First, every life, no matter whether they are Shia, Sunni, Christian or Hindu, is sacred. We are taught from a young age that the taking of one life is equivalent to the killing of all humanity. That is a fact that we will not be able to escape, no matter what the justification we use to convince ourselves otherwise. Taking someone’s life is the sole responsibility of Allah, God, or Baghwan and not that of any human being looking to achieve a political or religious objective.

Second, there is no excuse for killing anyone. There are wars between nations where militaries are called to fight and those, while horrific, are where loss of life is understood, not accepted. Yet when one human decides that another’s life is no longer valuable, for any reason, that human has elevated himself to the place of God, Allah, or Baghwan, which should not be acceptable to any of us. But too many follow the beat of the drummer, the whistle of the pied piper and the chorus of the unholy, nodding their heads in acceptance of the taking of life.

I would hope that we are able to agree that these two principles are acceptable to all of us as members of the human race. I would hope, at least.

Thus, I come to the things that make me shudder as a human being.

We have a convicted murderer who claims to have killed in the name of Allah because someone, in his opinion, violated Allah’s laws. The key to that whole statement is ‘in his opinion’. When he is presented in court, people shower him with flower petals, chanting in his honor while reading naats for his protection from justice. The courts are afraid to punish him because the retribution that will be delivered by his supporters, the families await the punishment so that they may have closure to the crime that was committed against them, and all the while the nation watches divided and debating whether he was correct in what he did or not.

We have terrorists charged with planning and executing brutal attacks against civilians that have done no wrong to them. Their only crime? They were standing close to the person that the terrorists wanted to neutralize, eliminate or whatever colorful word you would choose for the brutal act that was carried out. The justification is the same as the murderer; in their opinion, the person had violated Allah’s laws. The courts again are frozen, unwilling to mete out justice in fear of retribution; the families await the punishment so that they may have closure, and the nation watches and debates.

We have innocent civilians that are members of a minority community who are viciously attacked by crazed fanatics for a crime that has not been proven in any court. They are beaten, tortured, burned and murdered because someone says they committed a crime against Allah’s laws, but there are no judges, no witnesses and no punishment from the state. Rather, an overexcited mullah will use his masjid loudspeaker to ramp up the villagers to the point where they hunt the person or family down and dole out their own justice for the perceived crime. These cases rarely see the inside of a courtroom, much less find people arrested, because they are afraid of the retributions of their supporters and justice is never served for anyone.

Notice that there is one common strain in all of these cases – in someone’s opinion. These are not cases that are proven in courtrooms, nor cases that have been investigated by police to determine wrongdoing. These are not people that have been deemed to be criminals of the state and deserving of punishment, yet they are given the most final punishment at the hands of someone who believes that they are doing Allah’s work.

Whether you want to accept it or not, this is the ugly face of terrorism today in Pakistan. We would like to package all terrorist acts into the simple formula of suicide attacks, assaults on institutions and things that lean more toward the grandiose, but any taking of life in the name of religion by a person who refuses to present the case in the court is an act of terrorism. Yet, when these things happen, we, as a nation, take a collective deep breath and step back, making promises, vowing to bring the criminals to justice and then go back about our normal daily affairs as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened.

As if nothing out of the ordinary has happened is where we lose our humanity and the terrorist win because we no longer see the brutality for what it is. We no longer understand the crime to be murder, a greater violation of Allah’s law than the justifications used to absolve the terrorists. We no longer stop to object that this is nothing out of the ordinary, nor do we speak out against it. We lose our humanity to the terrorists, allowing us to believe that this is acceptable, this is commonplace and this is Allah’s law.

Sometimes, I wonder why some terrorist attacks are mourned more than others, and so should you, if you have any humanity left in you.

This article originally appeared in The Nation newspaper.