http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=PAKISTAN
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NOTE: The following text is a quote:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/016160.php
April 22, 2007
Pakistan music shops blown up
Because they’re “un-Islamic.” Islamic law forbids music (cf. ‘Umdat al-Salik r40.1), although this law has of course often been ignored. There is some terrific music created in the Islamic world. And of course there was beginning in the Fifties an Islamic vogue in American jazz, with prominent musicians — Art Blakey (Abdullah ibn Buhaina), Yusef Lateef — converting to Islam. Of course music can be and has been used as a vehicle for da’wah: this excellent 1970 recording takes its name from an imprecation against the unbelievers in Qur’an 2:18.
But the law remains — it has never been reformed or rejected by any significant Islamic authority. Consequently it can always be reasserted, as here.
From AFP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A homemade bomb blew up three video and music shops in a market in northwest Pakistan where hardliners believe the businesses are un-Islamic, police said Sunday.
The blast happened late Saturday in Swabi, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of Peshawar, the capital of the deeply conservative North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, they said.
“It destroyed one shop and partially damaged two others, but there were no casualties as the market was closed,” local police chief Fazal Elahi Badshah told AFP.
The blast occurred in the Gulzada Market, which has some 80 shops of CDs, DVDs, tape recorders and also houses groups of bands usually hired to perform in wedding ceremonies, residents said.
Islamic hardliners who say music and movies are un-Islamic have dubbed the shopping complex the “Hell market,” they said, adding that some shopkeepers had received warning letters in the past.
The province has seen previous attacks on video and music shops blamed on extremists emulating the ultra-orthodox Taleban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
Posted by Robert at April 22, 2007 08:14 AM
http://www.travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_2121.html
Travel Warning
United States Department of State
Bureau of Consular Affairs
Washington, DC 20520
This information is current as of today, Sun Apr 22 2007 08:58:20 GMT-0700.
AFGHANISTAN
April 04, 2007