On Wednesday, 19 churches and more than 80 Christian homes in Pakistan were ransacked after the inhabitants of the city of Jaranwala were accused of blasphemy against Islam. Perhaps the most unacknowledged aspect of the violence was just how expected it was.

Nationwide, non-Muslim places of worship, especially churches, have been on high alert for the past month following burnings of the Quran carried out in Sweden by anti-Islam protesters. All the Islamic clergy and groups in Pakistan needed was an excuse to ignite the tinderbox.

It’s unfortunate that Pakistan can’t seem to muster even residual security for some of its citizens

The excuse was provided by a rumour that desecrated pages of the Quran were found near the home of a Christian family in Jaranwala. Such ‘evidence’ can easily be fabricated, or planted, to implicate someone in Pakistan. The accusation is, anyway, a mere formality since both the vox populi, and the country’s penal code, assert that the intangible, victimless crime of outraging Islam merits violence. The one thing radical Muslim mobs and the state of Pakistan differ over is whom to delegate the responsibility of carrying it out.

Once it was alleged that desecrated pages of the Quran had been found in Jaranwala, mosques in the region whirred into action, inciting bloodshed with due references to the events in Sweden. Soon, members of the radical Islamist group Tehrik-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), which has previously urged Pakistan to drop a nuclear bomb on France for Charlie Hebdo’s caricatures of Muhammad, started assembling the mob.

With 76 years of Islamic supremacism hammered into the national discourse, it was never going to be difficult to gather a sufficient number of Muslims who would already feel entitled to be offended by the existence of the church crosses the ensuing mob demolished and the Bibles they burnt. That Christians are considered ‘People of the Book’ in Islamic theology also becomes redundant when mosques remind everyone at least five times a day in the Islamic call to prayer that all other gods are false except Allah.

Even so, perhaps the most critical cog in Pakistan’s blasphemy machinery is the law enforcement personnel who have an unblemished record of total absence in such situations. It’s unfortunate that Pakistan, a country created and sustained as a security state, can’t seem to muster even residual security for some of its citizens. While critics of the state can disappear within the blink of an eye, majoritarian mobs always have ample time to make a show of their demolition acts, invariably recorded on video.

Having police deployment isn’t always beneficial though, as former Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer found out in 2011. He was gunned down by his own security guard for having the audacity to say out loud that there might actually be something amiss with a law that wants to kill people for words.

Taseer had also defended Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who spent a decade in jail facing the death penalty over blasphemy charges after drinking water from the glass of a Muslim. Taseer’s murderer, who was paid to protect the man he killed and was hanged for his crime, is now a saint with his own shrine in the capital Islamabad, and inspired the rise of the TLP.

Similarly, Hindu police officers must be deployed to Hindu temples in the Pakistani province of Sindh. Muslim officers there seemingly cannot be relied on to protect the idols whose destruction is glorified in Islamist discourse.

Police also can’t be trusted with the protection of the mosques of the constitutionally excommunicated Ahmadi Muslim sect, which are being increasingly demolished by law enforcement themselves. (Among the many glittering distinctions of Pakistan when it comes to religious extremism is the fact that it is the only country in the world where an individual can be arrested for reciting the Quran, should they happen to identify as an Ahmadi.)

Even so, after non-Muslim worship places are vandalised, homes torched, and individuals killed, there comes the most crucial step in Pakistan’s blasphemy template: Muslim victimhood.

While churches in Jaranwala were still ablaze, outgoing prime minister Shehbaz Sharif still managed to summon the audacity to condemn Sweden for ‘hurting the emotions of Muslims’. If it’s not Sweden, or France, a favourite rallying cry in Pakistan is for the plight of the Muslims of India, a country with 300,000 mosques, and growing – 300,000 more, at any rate, than the number of Hindu temples built in Pakistan since partition in 1947.

Those who might be a tad bit surprised by Pakistan’s bravado in deciding to condemn other countries’ treatment of Muslims and Islam, might be intrigued to know that more is planned. The country is actively working towards exporting its sharia code to create a global Islamic blasphemy law. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) backed the move, insisting it will be egalitarian in nature.

Their questionable logic goes: you provided equal-opportunity allowance for a book to be burnt, or a cartoon to be drawn. We codify death for offending the majority’s sentiments, allow the minorities’ places of worship to be frequently demolished, and practically hold millions violently hostage in their own country. Let’s call it even.