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| Afghanistan/South Asia | ||
| Nuggets from the Urdu press | ||
| 2004-12-24 | ||
| Freedoms we have lost Writing in Jang, Nazeer Naji stated that in the past Pakistani society was more free. People used to do preaching for Islam but there was more emphasis on example than on coercion. Today any kind of celebration is banned. We cannot celebrate the new year, we cannot celebrate weddings indoors if we serve food and singing which used to be so common in the past is now disapproved. Pretty dresses for women are now frowned at. Anglo-Indian ladies who once plied their bicycles freely in Lahore have long migrated out of Pakistan. Restaurants where the youth of Lahore used to enjoy their evenings are nowhere in sight. Pakistani films show goonda-gardi [thug] and kalashnikov culture instead of romance. Worshippers at mosques are no longer safe. Even different dresses for the different sects have been made obligatory in some communities. Pakistani society is internally riven with narrow mindedness.
Lahoris hit the bottle on Eid According to Khabrain, the people of Lahore hit the bottle on Eid and consumed worth Rs 1.5 crore of it during the Eid holidays. After it was declared that the Eid moon had been sighted, the Lahoris went berserk looking for alcohol and picked up all the stock available at the hotel bar rooms. In one day, they emptied four bar rooms, buying alcohol worth Rs 80 lakh. Quarrel over moon-sighting (again) According to Khabrain, this year too many clerics refused to go along with the verdict of the Ruet-e-Hilal Committee and accused it of announcing Eid on Sunday without really sighting the moon in accordance with the practice laid down in the Quran. Some mosques in Lahore and Gujranwala actually got their followers to celebrate Eid on Monday instead of Sunday. At the Taxali Gate mosque one imam took the people sitting in etekaf (divine trance) hostage and forced the community to observe Eid on Monday through the order of completing 30 fasts. Zeenat Masjid and Jama Masjid Razvia in Gujranwala also rebelled and observed Eid on Monday. In Peshawar the rebels were actually arrested and released later. Asoka not acceptable Daily Khabrain published reaction to federal education minister General (Retd) Javed Ashraf Qazi that Pakistan's history books should contain chapters on Asoka and Chandra Gupta Mauriya. Teachers and students said if this was done they would come out and hold protest rallies. One religious leader said that Islamic culture was being destroyed while another intellectual said that it was no use teaching Asoka in Pakistan. Islami Jamiat Tulaba said such additions to the course would be resisted, while Imamya Students said they would not tolerate it.
Who killed Murtaza Malik? According to Nawa-e-Waqt, the men who killed Lahore's renowned but controversial religious scholar Dr Ghulam Murtaza Malik in 2002 were arrested by the police during a chance stop-and-search operation. The two were violent criminals produced in the past years by a mixing of jihad with crime. In the decade of the 1990s jihad brought more weapons into the underworld and gave rise to new brands of armed robbery. Youths taking to it found it easier to kill and stick around without witnesses rather than steal and flee as they used to do in old days. The arrested dacoits admitted that a religious leader called Dr Hafiz Shahid of Pattoki, leader of Sunni Tehreek, told them to kill two religious scholars because they were 'insulters' of the Prophet PBUH. They lured a rather greedy Dr Malik out of his house on the promise that they would gift a piece of land to him and shot him to death on a deserted road. They also killed another religious scholar Prof Ataur Rehman Saqib the same year for the same 'offence'. | ||
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #4 Yeshhh... |
| Posted by: Fred 2004-12-24 6:50:00 PM |
| #3 No. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-12-24 4:55:17 PM |
| #2 After it was declared that the Eid moon had been sighted the Lahoris went berserk looking for alcohol and picked up all the stock available at the hotel bar rooms. In one day, they emptied four bar rooms, buying alcohol worth Rs 80 lakh. Is there hope? |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-12-24 4:17:51 PM |
| #1 Mmmmm....Urdu nuggets |
| Posted by: Spot 2004-12-24 10:14:14 AM |