I am brown, Muslim and Pakistani.

You’d think those credentials would normally make me immune from terrorist attacks, considering it is widely believed that most terrorists are also brown, Muslim and Pakistani.

Unfortunately, the war on terror, and terror itself, is all but normal. This is the story of a Pakistani struggling with that abnormality. The more we try to simplify the situation, the less we have in our arsenal against extremist ideology. The best I can do in this column is complicate things for you, since grappling with confusion is better than settling for simplification.

As much as most modern Pakistanis distance themselves from an extremist ideology, it only takes a trip to New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport to remind me that we will remain connected to the so-called “fundamentalist tendencies” back home. After all the time I’ve spent there, the secondary inspection room is no longer something that I need to get used to. It has already become a place to catch up on reading and meet other people who are also perhaps missing their connecting flights and have a headache. The poor pilots aren’t even spared.

“Did you go anywhere but Pakistan?” an officer asked me last December. “No,” I said. “Have you ever been in a military?” “Have you ever owned a firearm?”  Similar replies. This September, the whole charade lost its drama. The wait, much longer, was now quite anticlimatic. All they wanted to know was whether I lived on campus. “All that waiting for nothing?” I thought. “At least give me some credit for the hippie garb I’m trying to pull off. Heck, even the Pakistani authorities send me to anti-narcotics until they realize I’m going to New York.”

We Pakistanis make jokes about everything (albeit, as you perhaps have witnessed now, and understand if you’ve ever talked to me, not very good ones). We learn ways to tune out all that goes on around us. Does that make me an innocent bystander? Or does that make me guilty of ignorance?

I’ve lived in Pakistan for 20 years now. The last few have been turbulent, perhaps dangerous. But I’ve never witnessed an attack first-hand. Does that mean I’m not from the Pakistan most people imagine? Does that mean I’m elite (or elitist) or just plain lucky?

A few days ago, one of my father’s colleagues was gunned down because of his continued public criticism of the extremist philosophy. He had been under threat, he knew what was coming, but he kept going, trying to get his word across. This was a great loss to the moderate cause and to humanity in general.

Does that episode make me more of a bystander? Or perhaps more of a victim?

If I say I understand where the extremists are coming from, does that make me more dangerous? I’m not saying I agree with them, but their thought process is plausible. It is flawed, but it contains some degree of logic.

And what do I make of the fact that these fighters, criminals (although heinous ones), are not granted the same rights that prisoners or combatants must be in all other situations? What are we to say about the people who are unfortunate enough to live in the same village as one of these “terrorists” and are killed in an unsanctioned drone strike that was meant to eliminate the “threat”?

Sure, our president is far enough from the reality of things to say that collateral damage does not worry him, but should that prompt us to forget the values that our country holds and apply separate standards to some segment of our citizenry?

I ask a lot of questions. I don’t have many answers. Things are complicated, and they can’t just be separated into right and wrong. Similarly, many Pakistanis can’t be classified as one or the other, as terrorist or not terrorist, threat or not a threat, Taliban or not Taliban.

The military has launched a full-scale war against these extremist elements. But Pakistanis were also confused when the war started. Many soldiers would ask, should we fight these men that claim to be holier than we are? Is it possible that perhaps they have some weight in their argument? Is it right to just go out and try to kill them?

The decision became easier once schools, colleges and places of worships were attacked. What used to be sacred places are now battlegrounds. Every Thursday night, Sufi worshippers will worry whether they will come out alive from their shrines. The army, the police and the government are threatened, as are foreigners at times, but the individual citizen now bears the brunt of the threat. Every Friday, we no longer hug each other as we go to prayer; we pat each other down. Who knows where that suicide vest is hiding?

Dialogue in the United States about Pakistan, and about the Muslim world in general, is oversimplified. There are no dichotomies. Muslims are often the “other” in most discussions in this part of the world. Every now and then I hear how many Americans have never met a Muslim or a Pakistani but would like to meet one. And every now and then I hear a Pakistani saying that there’s only so much they can do — of course a Pakistani will try to present the other side of Pakistan, but everyone’s sick of that story.

I am brown, Muslim and Pakistani, and I’m confused. I hope you are too.