There can be no doubt (not that there should have been before, but anyway) that there exists a well-organised movement that wishes to replace our democratic system of government with a religious theocracy, and that they are prepared to use any means necessary to achieve their ends.

Don't take my word for it -- or that of any other media trouble-maker for that matter. Take their word for it.

Interestingly enough, though, early indications are that neither the government nor the opposition are doing so.

BNP Standing Committee member Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain laid the blame for the bomb blasts at the door of those "trying to tarnish the image of the country." He did not come right out and implicate the opposition, but his suggestion that the perpetrators "want to create political issues as they don't have genuine issues against the government" echoes earlier critiques of the AL and leaves little to the imagination.

Jamaat-e-Islami leaders were less circumspect. Senior party leaders including Secretary General and Cabinet Minister Ali Ahsan M. Mujahid pointed the finger of blame straight at the AL, and asserted that the blasts were part of an opposition plan to make the country politically unstable and bring it into disrepute.

This kind of irresponsible and mendacious accusation is more of the same from the government, which has made even more unsupportable claims about previous terrorist attacks such as the one on the AL rally last August 21. The time has come to speak honestly and to stop insulting the intelligence of the country.

Let's be perfectly frank. If the AL had the organisational capacity and internal discipline to pull off this kind of an attack, it would have been able to force the government from office long ago.

For its part, the AL is laying the blame for the bombings squarely at the feet of the government. Sheikh Hasina is on record as saying that "without government involvement no one could carry out such a series of bomb blasts in 63 districts at a time" and opining that culpability goes all the way to the PM.

Persuasive as this argument might seem, there is another possibility in terms of how the government could have let such an attack occur, which given the government's record seems far more likely -- common or garden incompetence.

Let's be frank here, too. If the government had the ability to pull this off then one would have expected that it would have been able to do a better job running the country the last few years.

Two more persuasive reasons militate against the possibility of government involvement or complicity with the bomb blasts.

One, the text of the leaflets found as well as the fact that administration and court buildings were principal targets make it clear that the bombers do not consider the current government their friend, regardless of the presence of mainstream religious parties within the ruling coalition.

Two, it is hard to see how the blasts do anything but hurt the incumbent government. The fact that religious extremists have been proved in such dramatic fashion to exist and that the government has apparently zero ability to curb their actions cannot benefit an administration hoping for re-election or trying to project a positive image of its rule to the outside world.

But this is not to say that the government can escape blame for what must be counted as a shocking failure on its part.

In the first place, the blasts happened on its watch, and so it is in part culpable. It is the government's job to keep us safe and it is clear that this is a duty that it is not meeting. In light of the other terrorist attacks and incidents of the past few years, the government had an even greater duty to take the steps necessary to ensure security, but what the blasts have proved is that the government has done little or nothing while the threat has grown right under its nose.

In the second place, a big part of the problem has been that for too long the government has insisted that it is not presiding over a time of rising religious militancy. The government instead blamed the opposition and the media and "foreign hands" for conspiring against it by fabricating such accounts for their own gain. The truth is that it is the government that has mined this issue for partisan gain and we are all paying the cost.

Third, the government's turning a blind eye to other incidents of religious militancy and its half-hearted pursuit of religious extremists in the past has served only to embolden them.

Let us not forget that the Jamat-ul-Mujiahideen was supposedly banned back in February. It is now clear that what the media has been saying all along, that the government action against the militants, which had left most of the senior leaders untouched, was little more than a public relations stunt intended to enhance the government's image rather than to strike effectively at the terrorists, is entirely correct.

But for all their faults, common sense and political self-interest dictate that neither the AL nor the BNP were behind the bomb blasts. The less time the government and opposition spend trading acrimonious accusations the better.

The question that we need to be focused on now is the implications behind this attack: why now, what do the bombers hope to gain from their campaign, and what does this mean for the future?

The first thing to note is that it seems that the attacks were intended not to cause maximum death and destruction (one can be thankful for small mercies), but to frighten or to send a message. Had the bombs been more powerful, thousands could have been killed or maimed.

It has been speculated that the blasts were a "dry run" for a future more devastating attack. But this makes little sense as one would have thought that the terrorists would not have wanted to tip their hand and alert the citizenry if they wished to inflict maximum casualties in the future.

The most likely motivation is that the bombers wished to send a message as to their organisational capacity, reach, and intentions.

The interesting thing is that such an approach is in marked contrast to earlier terrorist attacks in the country, which were almost all committed anonymously. The question we need to be asking is what does it mean that the Jamat-ul-Mujahideen is now stepping out of the shadows.

It means, at the very least, that the time is long overdue for us to get serious about this threat. It is not true, as the government has long claimed, that violent extremists do not exist in the country. It is evident that they exist, and are well-funded and well-organised.

However, neither is it true that there are extremists hiding under every rock and that they are poised to take over the country. The good news is that there is no evidence that the terrorists enjoy any kind of support among the general public. We cannot be complacent but we need not be alarmist either.

But let us hear no more denials of what we all know to be true. The government has brought this on itself due to its perfunctory pursuit of religious extremists in the past. Unfortunately, it has brought this on all of us, too.

The Jamat-ul-Mujahideen has fired the first shot. The serial bomb blasts need to be recognised as a warning shot across the bows of the nation. The smart move would be to take heed. This might sound ridiculously obvious, but the fact is that in the past too many of us have not taken heed of the threat that has been gathering.

Let us never again hear anyone say that religious extremists are not active in the country or that they are not a serious threat. After August 17, we can never again say that we haven't been warned.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.