The poster children of the Religion of Peace are at it again...yes, the Taliban are now forcing Pakistani singers and actors to abandon their vocations and join ultra islamic preaching groups...all under a threat of death. Now mind you, these are the Taliban located in the NW corner of the country who the government continues to sign peace agreements with yet the reach of the Taliban continues to move more and more south. Here's some of the details from the article over at The Telegraph:
The same symptoms of Talibanisation that first surfaced in Swat have now appeared in Peshawar.
I've said it so many times here that it rings in my ears but here goes again...the Taliban in Pakistan are a cancer - not only a cancer to Pakistan but to the world. Yet the Pakistani government, feeble and spineless as they are, continue to appease this disease with some sort of herbal remedy instead of attacking it with a surgical knife and radiation to kill it. And it is spreading. Slowly but surely the Taliban have perfected their brand of terror and as it spreads throughout this country, one can only imagine how long it will actually be that the Taliban own the country of Pakistan.
Nazia Iqbal, a singer from Peshawar who is known as much for her beauty as her popular melodies, retired this week from singing and joined the Tablighi, a conservative religious preaching group.
She was just one of a group of singers to make the enforced transformation.
Wagma, another Pashtu-language woman singer, said that she had also received death threats and joined the group of preachers.
"In the initial stage, I joined the group under threat, but now I have realised that this is a noble way of life and I shall stick to it and shall never return to singing," she said.
The death knell for Peshawar's once vibrant cultural life is one more indication that the Taliban has infiltrated the gates of Peshawar, a strategic frontier city close to the border with Afghanistan.
The same symptoms of Talibanisation that first surfaced in Swat have now appeared in Peshawar.
I've said it so many times here that it rings in my ears but here goes again...the Taliban in Pakistan are a cancer - not only a cancer to Pakistan but to the world. Yet the Pakistani government, feeble and spineless as they are, continue to appease this disease with some sort of herbal remedy instead of attacking it with a surgical knife and radiation to kill it. And it is spreading. Slowly but surely the Taliban have perfected their brand of terror and as it spreads throughout this country, one can only imagine how long it will actually be that the Taliban own the country of Pakistan.
Taliban threatens Pakistani singers and actors with death
The death knell for Peshawar's once vibrant cultural life is one more indication that the Taliban has infiltrated the gates of Peshawar, a strategic frontier city close to the border with Afghanistan.
Peshawar, the capital of the troubled North West Frontier Province (NWFP), is a staging post from where the US is attempting to embark on development projects to counter the "Talibanisation" of the region.
But its citizens are increasingly bitter that the federal government has left them at the mercy of the Taliban and fear that the provincial capital could become the "next Swat" which will fall under the sway of the militants.
In the Valley of Swat, a former tourist destination in NWFP, militants embedded in the local population have forced the Pakistani army to agree to a peace deal and to impose sharia, or religious, law.
The same symptoms of Talibanisation that first surfaced in Swat have now appeared in Peshawar.
When militants killed a woman dancer in Swat several months ago, her murder forced scores of other dancers and their families to take refuge in Peshawar, Lahore and Karachi.
Shahenshah Bach, a singer from Peshawar who is an icon among young rural Pashtuns, has also joined the group of preachers.
With a black beard and a white turban wound around his head, the singer who was once known for his emotional love songs is now moving with groups of preachers from village to village and city to city to spread the message of hardline Islam.
The singers are reluctant to admit they have been forced to abandon their livelihoods to become "missionaries".
But a comic actor's public renunciation of his craft left locals in Peshawar in no doubt that most were forced to adopt religious garb.
A month ago a prominent stage and TV comedian, Alamzeb Mujahid, announced his departure from acting at a press conference.
He had been kidnapped beforehand by unidentified people and was kept in captivity for almost a week.
3 comments:
I think it's because of the stark choice presented in your title that there is so little art and beauty in Islam.
Of course, the only truly masterful things Islamic culture tends to create are mosques, and that's all about spreading their odious political and social control.
Very sad, really.
These Taliban types need a good trip to Vegas. One American divorcee is worth at least 12 virgins. Maybe a trip to the Bunnyranch for all these guys would be cheaper than an invasion. This is what happens when your culture keeps you from booze and pork ribs.
Right after 9/11, TIME Magazine had an article about life in Pakistan, and they too talked about the musicians who had to bury their instruments in the sand, or be killed for using them, could be killed for playing tapes or CDs, or performing at weddings.
It wasn't just that, it was also things like shaving beards, and cutting hair - and it's MEN we are talking about here - the abuse of women is already clearly documented.
This is why I cannot understand why young people, the Left and Hollywood who love their music and the related freedoms are not horrified, are not marching in the streets in solidarity with these people, demanding better conditions.
Instead, they chose to hate Bush and love the Taliban. It makes no sense.
They wouldn't even let their own parents tell them what kind of music to listen to, much less tolerate being told they couldn't listen at all. But they tolerate and embrace the extremists.
If they won't stand up to protect women who are being denied education, and women who are being stoned to death on camera and beheaded in soccer fields, you'd think at least, they'd stand up for MTV.
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