Agreed. However it appears to me that they are on duty ....
I know religion is a touchy subject and because he is praying and being seen to be 'pious' he has everything tilted in his favour and not seen to be proper by questioning him. IMHO in so far as we can draw any conclusions he is on duty from the image capture. They are on top of a bridge, uniformed, part of the patrol is standing behind armed and watching. All this leads me to conclude on the balance of probability that this soldier has taken unto himself 'time out'. After all who in their right mind in Pakistan is going to complain about him unless you want a bullet in your head?
In principle of course if he is off duty and or on authorized 'break' that is entirely differant matter. At heart of what I said alludes to the fact that in Pakistan we have taken public religiousity and rituelism to altogather another level. We wear religion on our sleeves. Form over substance.Things might not be too bad if all this public amd rampant religiousity actually improved the human state, that is made us more humble, more law abiding, more nicer to each other, more caring, more considerate however having spoken to many people who grew up in the more placid 1950s, 60s tell me people in Pakistan are more edgy, explosive ( literal and metephorically speaking ) more prone to tear each other apart at the slightest excuse of sectarian, ethnic or some other self made divide.
We have not created a nation instead we have warring groups. We have millions of who owe their allegiance to whatever takes their fancy. Take the religious brigade, they don't have any loyalty to Pakistan. They claim they have loyalty to higher authority Allah. That is well and fine but the problem is who is the 'medium or translater' of the almighty's authority? Qadri who murdered Salman Taseer validates his murder by invoking that very authority himself.
In fact what we have created is perfect recipe for chaos. For everybody can invoke the authority of Almight and regard himself as the 'translator'. Only problem is the next guy does the same thing only his invokation translates into something he feel contradicts with the first person. Result: Two people both feel they have almighty behind thus have no quiver of doubt. That leads to only one thing ... death as they kill each other in the certitude that they alone are extending Islam.
Only few days ago dozens were murdered in Karachi, the people who did it were driven with the faith that they were extending Islam and meting out Islamic justice and defending Islam. That group had arrogated the authority to decide themselves, Salman Taseer's murderer arrogated that right to translate unto himself and in a ever so tiny, minuscule way this soldier is doing the same, namely arrogating the right to this with the knowledge and belief that his has almighty to back him up. With that behind him which mortal dare question him?
Kindly note I am going on the assumption that this trooper was on duty which perforce to me looks the case. As stated before if he is off duty or on break what he is doing is perfectly valid ...
