| Submit your comments on this article |
| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Nuggets from the Urdu press |
| 2004-03-26 |
| Arrested for blasphemy According to Insaf, 30 people came out on the streets in a village near Sialkot and started shouting slogans against the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and the great caliphs, whereupon the local chief of Sipah Sahaba got the police to register a case against them. The police then rounded up the 30 offenders under blasphemy law and sealed the FIR. The paper pointed out that Sipah Sahaba was banned in the area but did not indicate why the police did not arrest its leader and instead arrested the accused under his direction. It also did not say if the matter was sectarian in which case the local chief of Sipah Sahaba was not a reliable plaintiff. America did it! Columnist Ataul Haq Qasimi wrote in Jang that he was greatly uplifted when he heard the Iraqi Shia saying that the 200 of them killed in Iraq on ashura was not the work of Muslims (read Sunnis) because no Muslim could do such a thing. The Shia in Iraq instead said that the evil deed was done by someone else. The columnist then said that the Shia of Pakistan should develop the same kind of thinking about the ashura massacre of Quetta which killed nearly 50 Shia. General Karamat’s son escapes According to Khabrain, the son of ex-army chief General Jahangir Karamat, Farrukh Jehangir, escaped to America instead of appearing before a court hearing a case against him of embezzling Rs 208 million from the Emirates Bank in Lahore some years ago. NAB had issued non-bailable warrants for him but Farrukh now wanted that his lawyer should represent him in Lahore while he stayed in America. America did it! Columnist Irshad Haqqani wrote in Jang that a foreign office spokesman in Islamabad had stated that the ashura massacre in Quetta had the hand in it of the Indian consulate in Afghanistan. In the Senate the opposition senators thought that it was a conspiracy hatched by a big foreign power. Case pending for 17 years According to daily Pakistan a case at a Lahore court was pending for 17 years. The case was in hudood jurisdiction and concerned a girl who had accused a man of robbing her home and abducting her and keeping her in illegal custody before the police got her freed. The boy concerned said that she had married her. The case was once again postponed because the steno of the additional judge Zafar Ali Khan was on leave! In all, 14 judges had heard the case without handing down a judgement and the parties involved had become old and the girl could not get married because the defendant had claimed that she was married to him. America did it! Famous columnist Abdul Qadir Hassan wrote in Jang that the ashura massacre in Quetta was just like the massacre in Baghdad and Karbala and the Muslims were convinced that it was not by the Muslims themselves. In present times when America had unleashed its aggression on the Muslims no Muslim group could think of killing another Muslim. In the case of the Quetta massacre, another country (read India) could join America in committing this evil deed. Those who investigate the massacre should keep the idea of foreign hand in their mind. Sipah Sahaba shootout in Gilgit According to daily Din, a week after ashura the banned Sipah Sahaba blocked the path of a Shia procession after which the administration deployed its paramilitary troops. There were 500 members of the banned organisation and they opened fire on the troops. Two men were seriously injured by the fire. After that the army was called out to patrol the city of Gilgit. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #4 They keep repeating the same theory about the American Government actively causing trouble throughout the world. This is pure fantasy. We should provide all Pakistani journalists with a video of a randomly chosen US government worker busily asleep at his or her desk. That should provide them with a more realistic idea of the odds of the US government actively fomenting trouble throughout the globe. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-03-26 8:03:44 PM |
| #3 Hey, if "famous columnist" Mike Barnicle's gig at the Herald don't work out, he could probably latch on to something over there... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2004-03-26 3:35:35 PM |
| #2 fruitcakes! they're not just for Christmas! |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-03-26 3:33:51 PM |
| #1 I'm detecting a pattern here... |
| Posted by: Raj 2004-03-26 12:21:14 PM |