Pakistani Social Media Celebrity Dead in Apparent Honor Killing

Qandeel Baloch (Credit: starsunfolded.com)
Qandeel Baloch
(Credit: starsunfolded.com)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Qandeel Baloch, a Pakistani social media sensation, was strangled by her brother in central Pakistan, police officials said Saturday, in what appears to have been a so-called honor killing.

The police said Ms. Baloch was apparently attacked on Friday night while she was asleep in her parents’ house in Muzaffarabad, a town on the outskirts of Multan in the province of Punjab. The police suspect her brother, Waseem Ahmed Azeem, of killing Ms. Baloch. His whereabouts was unknown on Saturday.

Ms. Baloch, 26, a model, singer and social media celebrity, had gained notoriety in Pakistan recently because of provocative, seminude photographs of herself that she posted on social media sites, and appearances in music videos.

Her bold persona defied the conventions of Pakistan, a deeply conservative society. She was reviled by some in the country for being crass and vulgar, and prone to attention-seeking stunts. But other Pakistanis admired her defiance and independence. She attracted more than 700,000 followers on Facebook and at least 40,000 on Twitter.

“Qandeel was probably the first true female internet celebrity in Pakistan, in that her celebrity had nothing to do with any achievement beyond her provocative presence on social media,” said Hasan Zaidi, a Pakistani filmmaker and media critic.

“It was unfathomable to a lot of Pakistanis that a real woman could be as brazen or shameless about her sexuality publicly, because her entire persona was built around flaunting her body, talking about sex and being in everyone’s face,” Mr. Zaidi said.

Ms. Baloch’s latest appearance was in a video by an unknown singer, in which she danced provocatively to a song titled “Ban.” The producers of the song anticipated that it could not be broadcast on mainstream entertainment channels and instead posted it on YouTube.

Born to a poor family from the backwaters of Punjab, Ms. Baloch, whose real name was Fauzia Azeem, said she had run away from home to pursue her dream of becoming a star. She took to social media after unsuccessful efforts to enter the mainstream entertainment industry.

In interviews, she acknowledged that she was pushing the traditional boundaries of socially acceptable behavior in Pakistan. “I know I exploited the freedom given to me by my parents,” she said in an interview with BBC. “But now, it is too late.”

In June, Ms. Baloch posted photographs of herself with a well-known Muslim cleric, Mufti Abdul Qavi, which attracted much attention on social media. The pictures show Ms. Baloch pouting and wearing the cleric’s hat while he, seemingly bedazzled, stares into the camera.

Many Pakistanis saw the photographs as scandalous, and Mr. Qavi was removed from his position on the country’s moon-sighting committee, which determines when Ramadan starts and ends in accordance with the Islamic lunar calendar.

On Wednesday, she found herself in the spotlight again after local media outlets reported that a man identified as her former husband claimed that he had a son with her and that he had divorced her after he could not meet her demands to provide a house and a luxury car. In response, Ms. Baloch said she had been a victim of domestic abuse.

Ms. Baloch was not shy about saying she wanted to be famous.

In a Twitter post on Wednesday, Ms. Baloch wrote: “I will fight for it. I will not give up. I will reach my goal & absolutely nothing will stop me.”

The news of her death prompted an immediate outcry on Twitter and Facebook in Pakistan, with many people condemning her killing and praising Ms. Baloch for her irreverent and uninhibited ways.

“Qandeel Baloch was no role model,” Sherry Rehman, an opposition politician and a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, posted on Twitter. “But she deserved a better life and death. Strongly condemn.”

The killing has put the spotlight back on so-called honor killings in Pakistan. Each year, hundreds of Pakistani women are killed by relatives angered by behavior they believe has tarnished the family’s reputation, human-rights activists say.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has vowed to strengthen laws intended to prevent such killings, but critics say no concrete steps have been taken yet.

In most cases, the honor killings take place within the family, said Syeda Sughra Imam, a former senator from Punjab who has pushed for legislation against the practice.

“The accused and the complainant are from the same family and they forgive each other,” Ms Imam said. “No one is ever prosecuted.”

Ms. Imam’s proposed legislation calls for eliminating a “forgiveness clause” in Pakistani law that allows families to reach a financial settlement or to forgive the killer.

“This killing with impunity has to stop,” Ms. Imam said.

Asim Tanveer contributed reporting from Multan, Pakistan.

Abdul Sattar Edhi honoured with Pakistan state funeral

Edhi funeral (Credit geotv.com)
Edhi funeral (Credit geotv.com)

Islamabad, July 10: Abdul Sattar Edhi, the founder of one of Pakistan’s largest public welfare charities, has become the first Pakistani in more than a quarter of a century to be honoured with a state funeral.

Edhi, believed to be in his early nineties, died of kidney failure in a Karachi hospital on Friday night having become increasingly frail in recent years.

Abdul Sattar Edhi runs a sprawling health charity from a Karachi slum, but that doesn’t stop the religious right condemning him for not saying his prayers

The pomp and military ceremony of his funeral at Karachi’s national stadium on Saturday was in stark contrast to the famously humble style of the man who only owned two sets of clothes and lived in a windowless room next to his small office in a Karachi slum.

From there, Edhi and his family ran a massive nationwide enterprise that relies almost entirely on public donations to sustain hundreds of medical centres, maternity wards, orphanages and women’s shelters.

More than 1,200 minivan ambulances ply the country’s roads, always seeming to reach the scene of the country’s frequent terrorist attacks within moments, while thousands of people owe their lives to the Edhi Foundation taking in abandoned babies who otherwise would have been left to die.

Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister, said the country had “lost a great servant of humanity”.

“He was the real manifestation of love for those who were socially vulnerable, impoverished, helpless and poor,” he said. “This loss is irreparable for the people of Pakistan.”

Sharif announced a national day of mourning and a state funeral, the first time anyone has been so honoured since General Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator who died in a plane crash in 1988.

“If anyone deserves to be wrapped in the flag of the nation he served, it is him,” Sharif said.

Although the prime minister remained in London following heart surgery last month, the funeral was attended by most of Pakistan’s ruling elite.

Edhi’s body was wrapped in Pakistan’s green and white flag and honoured with a gun salute by the army. Afterwards he was due to be buried at the Edhi Village, a shelter on the outskirts of the city for the mentally ill, older peaople and abandoned women.

In a final act of modesty, his family said he had insisted on being buried in the clothes he died in. He offered his organs for donation, although only his cornea was healthy enough for transplantation.

As a young man, Edhi first moved to Karachi from Gujarat in India just six days after Pakistan was formed as an independent, Muslim-majority state.

It was in the port city that his charity empire first emerged in the 1950s when, appalled by the suffering he saw around him, he established small drug dispensaries.

In 1957, his efforts shifted up a gear when he established a makeshift hospital to take care of the victims of flu epidemic that had ripped through the city.

He bought his first ambulance in 1965 in the wake of a war with India in which Karachi was bombed. He took it upon himself to collect up body parts of dead civilians and organise dozens of funerals.

“My heart became so hard after that,” he told the Daily Times in 2009. “I made humanity my religion and devoted my life to it.”

Despite its scale and complexity, Edhi and his wife, Biquis, always remained at the helm of the lightly managed organisation, often answering emergency calls himself or heading out in one of his ambulances to the scene of disasters.

that plague Karachi would spare his vehicles emblazoned with the red Edhi lettering.

The nation was shocked in October 2014 when armed men robbed his office while he was in bed. The £400,000 of stolen cash was soon replaced by donations.

In a country increasingly afflicted by sectarianism and religious intolerance, Edhi won praise for caring for anyone who needed help, with many Pakistanis arguing he should have been recognised with a Nobel prize.

His open-mindedness earned him the distrust of some hardliners and militant groups that have increasingly sought to set up their own welfare organisations modelled on the Edhi Foundation.

In a 2015 interview with the Guardian, Edhi dismissed his critics on the religious right who have smeared him as an infidel who will not be granted access to heaven. “I will not go to paradise where these type of people go,” he said. “I will go to heaven where the poor and miserable people live.”

12 Pakistanis, seven Saudis arrested following Madina blast

Blast in Madina parking lot (Credit: siasat.com)
Blast in Madina parking lot
(Credit: siasat.com)
DUBAI, July 8: Saudi Arabia identified on Thursday suspects in two of the three attacks that struck the kingdom on the same day this week, including one outside the sprawling mosque where the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is buried in the western city of Madina that killed four Saudi security troops.

In a statement released by the Interior Ministry late Thursday, authorities said the Madina bomber in Monday’s apparently coordinated attacks was 26-year-old Saudi national Na’ir al-Nujiaidi al-Balawi.

Three suicide bombers behind a botched attack, also Monday, outside a Shia mosque in the eastern region of Qatif in which no civilians or police were wounded, were identified as Abdulrahman Saleh Mohammed, Ibrahim Saleh Mohammed and Abdelkarim al-Hesni, all in their early 20s.

It was not immediately clear what nationality or nationalities the three carried.
The ministry said investigations following the attacks led to the arrests of 19 suspects, seven Saudi and 12 Pakistani nationals. No other details were immediately available.
On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia identified the suicide bomber who struck outside the US Consulate in Jeddah as a Pakistani resident of the kingdom who had arrived 12 years ago to work as a driver. It named him as 34-year-old Abdullah Gulzar Khan. It said he lived in the port city with “his wife and her parents.: The statement did not elaborate.

In that attack, the bomber detonated his explosives after two security guards approached him, killing himself and lightly wounding the guards, the ministry said. No consular staff were hurt. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks but their nature and their apparently coordinated timing suggested the militant Islamic State (IS) group could be to blame.

Pakistan has condemned Monday’s attacks in the kingdom. There are around 9 million foreigners living in Saudi Arabia, which has a total population of 30 million. Among all foreigners living in the kingdom, Pakistanis represent one of the largest groups.
The Saudi ministry said the attacker in the Madina assault set off the bomb in a parking lot after security officers became suspicious about him. Several cars caught fire and thick plumes of black smoke were seen rising from the site of the explosion as thousands crowded the streets around the mosque.

Worshippers expressed shock that such a prominent holy site could be targeted. The Prophet Muhammad’s mosque was packed on Monday evening, during the final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramazan, which ended on Tuesday. Local media say the attacker was intending to strike the mosque when it was crowded with thousands gathered for the sunset prayer.

Saudi Arabia is part of the US-led coalition fighting IS in Iraq and Syria, and the militant group views its ruling monarchy as an enemy.

The kingdom has been the target of multiple attacks by the group that have killed dozens of people. In June, the Interior Ministry reported 26 terror attacks in the last two years.

No Hard Evidence ISIS is Operating in India

BD attack (Credit: ibtimes.co.uk)
BD attack
(Credit: ibtimes.co.uk)

The Islamic world, at the end of this week, looks like a series of boiling cauldrons from Dhaka to Kabul through to Istanbul and Baghdad. Islamist rage depicts itself equally violently in killing other Muslims as it does infidels. This – Islamist terror – is the common thread between terrorist acts in Mumbai, Paris, Brussels, Orlando and all over Afghanistan. From Syria-Iraq, the scourge has spread to Libya and will reach out to the rest of Africa, Europe and even the US.

Let us make no mistake that Islamist terror is thriving globally. A section of the Muslims is using extreme violence to terrorise fellow Muslims. Yet, the other hard reality is that hundreds of thousands of Muslims are willing to die and kill in the name of Islam as that see that as the way to paradise.

The other issue is whether, in all this, the Dhaka attack is a manifestation of ISIS’s presence or an example of local radical groups using the ISIS brand to seek publicity through their gruesome acts. It is doubtful if ISIS have sent their CEOs to manage things in Bangladesh. What, however, is more likely is that those Bangladeshis who had gone to Syria and Iraq have returned and are now willing to be used by one or more of the several radical organisations that still exist in the country. These could be independent acts replicated all over the world. They are more like franchises than actual branches of the main group. It is a kind of  common discourse with groups acting under peer pressure knowing that the rest of us do not have an adequate reply. Drones will kill but they do not prevent the birth of other jihadists.

To understand where the world stands today perhaps a short recap of recent history is necessary. The game was played in several playing fields. Vietnam had been a Cold War disaster for the US and an early reprieve was necessary. Proxy wars in Africa had not delivered satisfactorily and Iran had slipped out of the US orbit. Brezhnev provided the opportunity to the US in December 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. For the first time, the US used religion and not democracy and human rights as weapons when the Afghan jihad was launched. And for the first time in modern history, Muslims from different parts of the ummah got together to battle the Evil Empire. Ultimately, an exhausted, over-stretched Soviet Union withdrew and the Afghan mujahideen thought this was the result solely of their bravery and Islamic faith. No credit was given to the US contribution for this victory.

The 1990s were different; the US lost interest in the region. The jihadi presumed he had inherited the world because of his superior religion. When this did not happen, the mullah reverted with great vehemence to promising paradise in the other life to be attained through war and dying for the faith. Theological orthodoxy has been the ploy since then.

The US administration allowed Pakistan to develop its nuclear capability when it winked at Zia ul-Haq’s efforts to nuclearise. Pakistan launched its proxies in India (and later in Afghanistan) in the 1990s confident that it could use terror as a weapon under a nuclear umbrella. The US had fought an inconclusive war in Iraq; Saddam Husain continued to be the ruler and the Americans were seen as occupation forces in Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda was born and Osama bin Laden swore to cleanse the Holy Land of infidel forces. September 11, 2001 brought the US back into West Asia with all its might and instead of concentrating on eradicating the threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Washington once again diverted its attention to Iraq. The world knows what happened there and how.

Arab Winter not Spring

Iran emerged as the strongest force in the region. The Arab Spring in Iran-backed Syria turned into a long cold bitter winter. ISIS was officially born in June 2014 when Abu Bakr Baghdadi made his sole appearance and announced the ‘caliphate’.

This is not to say that ISIS or the Al Qaeda are solely the result of US policies and interests. Local dictators and monarchs have contributed to this by suppressing any attempt at collective emancipation of their people and denied them any hope of power sharing. ISIS was helped in its phenomenal rise by the Saudis and the Qataris in their regional and sectarian battles against Iran. But even they did not expect the group to be so successful in its efforts at state-building. In fact, the caliphate would be a great danger to all the Muslim allies of the West in the region. There may be some truth in reports that the Iranians and the Saudis secretly met in an effort to try and dissolve the caliphate. Turkey tried to play the dangerous game in several ways with and against ISIS in order to contain the Kurds. The Istanbul airport bombing is the result of this double game, just as much as the recent onslaught in Baghdad with hundreds killed is obviously mean to exhibit its strength and discredit reports that its hold is slipping.

It is impossible to fully discuss here the complex nature of the relationships in West Asia, which is compounded further by the interests of other outside powers that drive the present chaos. The Al Qaeda-ISIS rivalry in West Asia is another factor that adds to the confusion. At some point they are conjoined twins – for instance Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have the ‘Shahada’ as their banner. ISIS concentrates currently in its own region, followed by Europe and the US. It is a kind of a reverse-crusade.

While ISIS brutality is particularly frightening, there are two factors that cause greater concern. One, the deliberate use of certain Quranic verses by the ISIS to justify its brutality is accepted by a section of Muslims in different parts of the world. This frightens others, especially non-Muslims whose knowledge about Islam is bound to be inadequate. The second is that we often make the mistake of assuming that others see themselves as we see them. While the rest of us assume that everyone considers ISIS to be evil incarnate, there are others who think otherwise. For us in India, we have the problem that confirmed Pakistani terrorist organisations like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba plan a ‘Ghazwa-e-Hind’ and dream of establishing three caliphates in India.

This fits admirably with the dreams of the Pakistani military mindset that seeks parity with India through confrontation. (Both share the same motto – ‘Jihad in the name of Allah’). Pakistani terror outfits dreamt of caliphates in India decades before Abu Bakr Baghdadi announced his caliphate in Iraq two years ago.

ISIS conceivably has no ethnic Arab presence or even interest in our region apart from the usual rhetoric. Bangladesh and Pakistan have Syria-Iraq returnees in larger numbers, who could be the vanguard of ISIS franchises. They would opt for the brand equity of ISIS and the latest attack in Dhaka was to register an international presence. Fortunately for India, we do not have those kinds of numbers in Syria or returning to wage jihad in their own country.

While one may be reasonably confident that ISIS will not make a mark in India, one should not be complacent and there is continued need to monitor the growing radicalisation of the youth in our major cities. Conscious efforts are being made to spread jihadist ideology. Inflammatory speeches and videos and violence against other sects are the usual ploys. There is little difference between Barelvi groups like the Raza academy and ISIS on theological principles such as blasphemy, apostasy and Shia Muslims. The number of Salafist mosques and madrassas all over the country has grown. These are funded illegally from abroad and tolerated and even, encouraged by state governments and the Centre. These institutions propagate Islamist supremacist ideologies that would ultimately lead to conflict.

We were lucky in Hyderabad with the recent arrest of 11 suspects alleged to be plotting terrorist strikes on behalf of ISIS. The problem is that for every terrorist plot disrupted, there could be several others in the pipeline. But to blame ISIS without evidence would be to create a scare. Since there is no real presence of ISIS capability, the only way this can happen in India is if Lashkar-e-Tayyaba wears the ISIS mask and begins to operate here. This will let Pakistan off the hook, the US would not have to push Pakistan any more and we will not be able to contemplate any action. India must not fall into the trap of changing the narrative about terrorism in the country without adequate proof.

Vikram Sood is the former chief of Research and Analysis Wing

Dozens killed as Islamic State pushes for territory in Afghanistan

ISIS in Afghanistan (Credit: pamelagellar.com)
ISIS in Afghanistan
(Credit: pamelagellar.com)

Dozens of people have been killed in clashes between Islamic State militants and Afghan forces as the extremist movement renewed efforts to seize parts of eastern Afghanistan.

Fighters pledging allegiance to the movement, also known as Daesh, attacked police checkpoints in the Kot area of Nangarhar province.

As many as 36 attackers were reported to have been killed in the assaults, with at least another dozen police and civilians also dead from the fighting.

The assault comes just three months after the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, said the militant movement had been wiped out in Afghanistan.

Afghan extremist fighters set up an offshoot of the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (Isil) in 2014 and have since fought both the Government and Taliban to increase their influence.

The US military estimates between 1,000 and 3,000 Isil fighters are in Afghanistan, mostly comprised of disaffected Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, as well as Uzbek Islamists and locals.

Saleem Khan Kunduzi, Nangarhar province governor, said: “There is no doubt that Daesh do not respect anyone.

“They kill people, regardless of whether they’re a child or a woman. They burn down madrasas, mosques and schools.”

Sediq Ansari, the head of Afghanistan’s civil society federation, blamed local leaders for failing to tackle the threat from Islamic State.

He told the Reuters news agency: “They should be accountable for every drop of blood that has been shed in Nangarhar so it becomes a lesson to other officials.”

Isil is also a bitter foe of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which it accuses of lacking Islamic zeal. The US Air Force has begun launching air strikes on its positions in the country. So far this year, between 60 and 80 American air raids have targeted Isil in Afghanistan, including those by drones and strike aircraft.

Isil’s leadership  is now believed to have left Nangarhar and moved northwards into the neighbouring Kunar province. That could be the next target if the group has the strength to expand.

Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport attack attributed to ISIS ‘blowback’

Ataturk airport (Credit: cnipo.com)
Ataturk airport
(Credit: cnipo.com)

The attack on Istanbul airport by suspected Islamic State terrorists is a classic example of unintended consequences, or what the CIA calls blowback.

But having turned a blind eye to the menace of Islamic State across its southern border for strategic reasons, Turkey can hardly be surprised at what is now occurring.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim says it is highly likely ­Islamic State is responsible.

If so, it will be the third terror ­attack committed by the group in Turkey this year.

Add in the gathering violence committed by Kurdish separatists and it is clear that Turkey, once ­described as the most cosmopolitan country in the Islamic world, now faces a worsening crisis of ­religious and political violence.

The problem has been inc­ubated by Ankara’s policies. Since the war began Turkey has used Syria’s innumerable opposition groups as a foil against the Assad regime, Turkey’s enemy and rival in the region.

Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has been increasingly supportive of Islamist movements across the region, including Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which in 2013 was over­thrown in a military coup.

But as the Americans discovered when they funded the Mujaheddin against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, terror groups like ­Islamic State and al-Qa’ida are “cold monsters’’. They have their own agendas, which will never align with the secular, liberal and peaceful society most Turks aspire to create. They are not your allies.

As a NATO member, Turkey has been an ally in the coalition air campaign against Islamic State, but a deeply reluctant one. Late last year it finally began launching sorties against Islamic State targets inside Syria and northern Iraq after much international pressure and a suicide attack in the border town of Suruc, which killed 34.

Turkey has also been broadly supportive of Australia’s efforts to suppress Islamic State, catching, where it can, transiting Australian fighters and deepening its co-­operation with our police and ­intelligences agencies.

But traditionally Ankara has shown more enthusiasm for bombing hostile Kurdish groups such as the PKK which have ­exploited the chaos in Syria and northern Iraq to establish a foothold on its border.

This has hindered the campaign against Islamic State as Kurdish fighting units are among the most effective troops in the Syrian-Iraq theatre.

Turkey has also allowed Islamist militants free reign at the border, both to smuggle foreign fighters into Syria and to move contraband, like oil, out of it. This has greatly contributed to Islamic State’s strength and wealth. But now, like spores to the wind, ­Islamic State’s attackers are spreading across the globe.

Yesterday’s attack was the third Islamic State assault in Turkey this year. It is unlikely to be the last.

For millions of Muslims, the murder of Sufi singer Amjad Sabri is about way more than music

Amjad Sabri (Credit: samaatv)
Amjad Sabri
(Credit: samaatv)

This week, the music died.

Amjad Sabri, a master of qawwali, the devotional music that is wildly popular across the Indian subcontinent and well beyond, was gunned down in Karachi, Pakistan. The man who spent his life singing the praises of the prophet Muhammad, continuing a centuries-long tradition of musical veneration, was accused of blaspheming the prophet, and he was executed for it.

During Ramadan.

That is so important, so painful and so hard to make sense of for the many Muslims — particularly for Pakistanis like me — because qawwali is part of our religion. At a time when Islam is reduced to warlike, uncivilized violence and portrayed as an angry, intolerant faith, qawwali is evidence of something different. The historic spread of Islam through much of what we call the Muslim world happened largely through architecture, calligraphy, poetry, but perhaps above all, music.

In South Asia, home to an astonishing one-third of the world’s Muslims, preachers and poets composed verse that survived for centuries, embedding Semitic values into local languages, a mix that was as intoxicating as it was unique. Qawwali is the soundtrack of that tradition.

The poetry, often Urdu or Punjabi, is set to music, usually in praise of God or the prophet Muhammad. A band of singers joins together to deliver songs that ecstatically convey the deep love of God, which classical Muslims expressed in secular metaphor: an intoxicating beloved, or an intoxicant itself.

Masters of qawwali, known as “qawwals,” are world famous. In fact, qawwali was the first concert I ever went to. His name was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and only later would I know enough about who he was, and what he sang, that my mind could be fully blown.

When I entered graduate school, it was to study Islam in South Asia, which means the many ancestries —Punjabi and Urdu, Hindu and Muslim, Arab and Turkish, Eastern and Western —that gave birth to me. There was a lot there for me to try to make sense of, an attempt to grasp not just facts and figures, but emotions and feelings.

My parents were religious, and very much socially conservative, and taught us that we shouldn’t dance in public, and certainly never men with women. But when I was 11, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan came to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where I was in grad school, and this very large man, cross-legged on a carpet spread out on the stage, joined by a team of musicians, began singing. Now, Nusrat was perhaps the greatest qawwal of all time; when I was growing up, the only names mentioned alongside him were the Sabri Brothers — one of whom was the father of Amjad Sabri.

There in that auditorium, I felt like a visitor on an alien planet, like someone who had seen the invasion of the body snatchers. My parents and their friends were up and dancing, and it wasn’t just that nobody cared; they loved it. They saw it as worship, probably.

History, heritage, theology, piety.

Qawwali emerges from the conviction that, before the majesty of God and the span of Creation, reason fails; only art, only music can possibly evoke the deepest feelings stirred in the human soul. So you have a musical form that reflects, in its very effect on you, the nature of faith as Muslims once believed it to be: A deep, romantic love, between a dependent human being, and an all-powerful Divine.

Here’s Nusrat performing “Allah Hu,” a simple, stunning song, whose very performance embodies the meaning of artistic endurance, which glorifies God by drawing attention to His utter otherworldliness, the translation of Islam’s radical monotheistic theology into rhyming verse: “when this land was not, when this sky was not, when this here was nowhere…. You, You….” Here’s a Pakistani rock band, Junoon — the name means ecstasy, passion, madness — performing the same song with a modern spin.

In the first moments of Junoon’s performance of “Allah Hu,” singer and guitarist Salman Ahmad announces, “The whole concept of a qawwali is not the performer performing, but the performer and the audience being in a spiritual bond.”

Maybe that’s why Sabri’s assassination hit so hard. Not just who we lost, or that we lost a piece of ourselves, but that many Muslims, especially Pakistanis and Indians, see qawwali as a bond between themselves and their history.

On Wednesday, I heard from many friends and colleagues, many but not all Pakistani, mourning Amjad Sabri’s death. One woman said she fought back tears the whole day.

Journalist Murtaza Hussain of the Intercept said it hit particularly close to home. “It was the music we grew up hearing around the house,” Hussain recalled. Not just Sabri, he meant, but all qawwali. “It was distinctively Pakistani and was our own unique expression of Islam. That’s why this killing really strikes at the heart and soul of Pakistan.”

“I don’t know if people outside the subcontinent can appreciate how much qawwali music is our own expression of religion,” Hussain said.

Sabri’s assassination happened in a Pakistan that itself would not exist without poetry — the great 20th century philosopher and poet, Muhammad Iqbal, might be said to have willed the Pakistan movement into existence. It was Iqbal’s poetry that roused the masses, that animated the idea of an Indo-Muslim homeland, that is read in every part of the Muslim world today. And that poetry is, as you would expect, also performed and sung.

But I don’t think it’s a time of mourning all the same, because I don’t think Sabri himself would have wanted us to see his death that way. The Sufis call the day of your death the wedding day, the day the lover leaves his temporary home to join his Beloved. It is a day for songs, for music, for crying out to God above and stamping your feet against the ground below, which is pretty much the best way I can think to describe our time here in this world, as long as it lasts.

It is with great regret that I must admit that I never had the chance to see Amjad Sabri in concert, but when I think about his passing, I keep remembering that Amherst auditorium.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a very large, very intense man, who seemed to be operating on a different plane of existence, who was among us, but not really with us. A hall where men and women, my aunties and uncles, as we addressed them, who always seemed so much older, so distant, so disconnected from the world I was born into, very soon jumped out of their seats and let loose, and turned round and round, laughing and dancing and clapping, ageless and joyous, as if they had, at last, come home. This was the music that connected generations of Muslims, that gave us a shared religious language.

I hardly understood a word out of his mouth, and yet I cannot forget it.

Which was, I suppose, the point.

Sabri murder/CJ son kidnapping aimed at creating panic in city – Ch Nisar

Kidnapped Owais Ali Shah (Credit: Indianexpress.com)
Kidnapped Owais Ali Shah
(Credit: Indianexpress.com)

ISLAMABAD, June 26: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Saturday said that the assassination of renowned Qawwal Amjad Sabri and kidnapping of Owais Ali Shah, son of Chief Justice Sindh High Court Sajjad Ali Shah in Karachi, are aimed at creating panic in the port city.

Speaking to Geo News, Khan said that these two incidents did not raise question mark on Karachi operation.

Nisar said he was in touch with all the agencies for the recovery of Barrister Owais Ali Shah.

The minister strongly condemned the killing of Amjad Sabri and said the purpose of Qawwal’s killing was to create panic among the masses.

He was optimistic the security agencies would soon bring to book the murderers of Amjad Sabri.

Sabri was travelling with an associate when two gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on his car on Wednesday.

He was shot multiple times and pronounced dead by medics at a local hospital where he was taken after the attack.

On Monday, The son of Justice Sajjad Ali Shah was kidnapped by unknown persons in Karachi and the law enforcement agencies seem to be clueless about his whereabouts.

This is not the first high-profile kidnapping in the country. In August 2011, slain governor Punjab’s son Shahbaz Taseer was kidnapped from Lahore by the Taliban. He returned home after four years of torture in captivity in March this year.

Former Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s son Ali Haider Gilani was kidnapped from an election rally in Multan in May 2013. He was rescued in an operation in Afghanistan by American forces in May this year.

The Unhinged Home that Raised Orlando Killer Omar Mateen

Siddique Mateen (Credit: wnd.com)
Siddique Mateen
(Credit: wnd.com)

A mother accused of domestic abuse and described as “paranoid.” A father became a supporter of the Taliban. Parents who spent years in and out of courtrooms. That’s the family that gave rise to mass-murderer Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people in the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando last Sunday.

As investigators continue to search for a motive in the largest mass-shooting in U.S. history, they are focused intensely on the three years prior to the attacks, including the period when Mateen, who worked as a private security guard, was on a terrorism watch list.

But a portrait of the killer’s upbringing also is beginning to emerge, through snapshots of a childhood marked by domestic strife, struggles in school, and outbursts of violence, which may yield some insights about why Mateen embarked on his murderous rampage.

Mateen grew up in a house of four children, where he was the only boy. School records obtained by The Daily Beast show that the New York-born Mateen struggled in school and stayed in English for Speakers of Other Languages classes through middle school. As he grew older, the bad grades became supplemented with violent outbursts, including at least two instances in which Mateen hit another child. One teacher noted that Mateen “lacks remorse.” When the family moved school districts in the eighth grade, he was suspended for 25 days from his new school. In his freshman year of high school, he was even sent to another school after fighting a student.

Between eighth and 10th grade, Mateen was suspended for 48 days for fighting and other behavioral issues. The final suspension recorded for Mateen came in the new school year, two days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Mateen, whose parents were born in Afghanistan, was given a five day in-school suspension at the alternative school for an “other disciplinary violation” on Sept. 13.

In school records, Mateen’s mother, Shahla, seemed largely absent from the discussion.

Official records suggest the couple had a history of marital problems. In 2002, when Mateen was 16, police came to the family house on Waterlily Place, in Martin County, Fla., and arrested Shahla on charges of beating her husband. According to a police report, the couple, then married for 20 years, had been arguing while their children slept. Seddique went to brush his teeth, and Shahla began cursing at him, and then pulled his hair and pinched him on the bicep hard enough to leave a red mark visible to police officers.

Shahla was carted off to the police station, where officers took her mug shot. Seddique asserted that his wife had threatened to hurt him in the future. “She said she knows what to do with him,” an officer reported. To the question, “Has the defendant previously assaulted or battered you,” Mateen answered, “Yes.”

Seddique didn’t press charges, and even posted his wife’s bail. There are no records of further domestic disturbances. But the incident would find disturbing echoes years later when Omar Mateen’s ex-wife accused him of beating her while they were married. (The allegations came to light after the shooting.)

The altercation between Seddique and Shahla wasn’t the couple’s only interaction with the legal system. They have been a party in at least eight civil lawsuits in St. Lucie and Martin counties since 1994, according to court records.

In at least three cases, the Mateens were dragged to court to settle an alleged debt; in five, they’ve been plaintiffs. In 1998, Seddique sued his employer, Equitable Life Insurance, saying they failed to make good on his own disability insurance policy after he became unable to work following an automobile accident and alleging they “harassed and intimidated” him while he sought payment.

In 2010, he sued Progressive Express Insurance Company; the case was dismissed in 2012.

The Mateens also sued two individuals: a couple in small claims court in 1996, and a woman in 2011 for auto negligence. The details of those cases weren’t immediately available. And in a handwritten letter to the Martin County court announcing his intent to sue his property owner’s association for what he said were unfair charges he refused to pay, Seddique scrawled, “I’m not a punching bag!”

Becky Diefendorf, 57, who worked with Shahla at two St. Lucie County Walgreens stores, told The Daily Beast she had several explosive run ins with her former co-worker, whom she described as “paranoid.”

Diefendorf, who said she left the chain in 2011, was a manager; Shahla worked the makeup counter. She said that Shahla had once accused her of throwing eggs at the family’s home and of slashing the tires on Shahla’s car.

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“I would guess that [she could be violent],” Diefendorf said of Shahla Mateen’s arrest for domestic abuse. “My daughter had to come to the store one night to make sure I was okay. That was the night she accused me of doing that to her house. And I got so upset that I was crying…and then it just became a really big mess.”

Diefendorf said Mateen’s mother rarely mentioned her son at work, but that she often alluded vaguely to problems at home.

“I do remember her leaving because she had family problems,” Diefendorf said. “She would just come at me and say, ‘I have to go, family problem,’ and leave.”

A client of Mariam Seddique, one of the family’s three daughters, who managed a beauty salon, said she sometimes saw Shahla at the shop.

“These are nice people, these are nice, friendly people,” the client, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Daily Beast. “They’re generous, they’re lovely…. I mean, I’ve never gone to her salon, had my hair done, and not come away with a gift.”

But while Mariam spoke often of her sisters and parents, the client said she rarely mentioned her brother, Omar. “I don’t think she has the relationship with him that she has with the rest of her family,” the client said.

She told The Daily Beast that she and Mariam would often discuss the differences between Islam and Christianity, and that it seemed like Mariam was “searching.” Mariam even worked for a time as a secretary at a now-defunct church in town, the client said.

The client also attended Mariam’s wedding in 2015, which she described as “the United Nations,” because so many people from different backgrounds and walks of life came. The Mateen family has said that Mariam’s husband, Masood Khan, is from Dubai.

The client said that the Mateens never told her that they were from Afghanistan. “They said they were Persian,” she recalled.

Of all the Mateen family members, Seddique has been the most visible, outspoken both in his condemnation of his son’s actions and his insistence that he can find no explanation for what drove Omar to commit mass murder.

Over the years, the elder Mateen has worked mainly as an insurance salesman. But recently he has turned to politics and made it into a family business. He founded a non-profit organization whose sole purposes appears to be the promotion of TV and Internet broadcasts of a political talk show he hosts. His daughters Sabrina and Mary are listed as directors of the company, the Durand Jirga Inc.

Since at least 2011, Mateen has hosted the show, which airs on a station in California that’s predominately aimed at the Afghan diaspora in the U.S. and Europe. In the 100-plus videos of the show posted to his YouTube page, Mateen usually sits at a desk in front of a video backdrop of mountains or animated graphics. Occasionally he’s joined by a guest or a panel, and from time to time Mateen turns roving reporter and interviews people in the field.

The theme of the videos is consistent: Mateen is an unabashed Afghan nationalist with a visceral hatred of Pakistan. The so-called Durand Line, a 19th Century border between the two countries, is a subject of frequent, heated discussion. Mateen styles himself as a kind of peacemaker–in at least one video he offers up a detailed peace plan for the two rival nations.

But he can be wildly inconsistent, too, at one moment praising the Taliban–the militant group that sponsored al Qaeda before 9/11 and continues to attack U.S. forces–and then condemning them for their violent acts.

Lately, the videos have taken on a delusional tone. Mateen has appointed himself president of Afghanistan and has posted to his Facebook pages the names and photos of people he claims are serving as ministers in his cabinet. Recent videos on his Facebook timeline show Mateen wearing camouflage fatigues and saluting the camera.

Mateen has something of a following in Afghanistan, but probably not the kind he’d like. “Many Afghans on social media have circulated his videos just to laugh and write some funny comments,” said one person who translated some of the videos for The Daily Beast and asked to remain anonymous. “In his videos, he addresses Afghan people to raise against the government of Afghanistan and Pakistan to pave the way for him to come to Afghanistan. … He is known among Afghans because of his abnormal statements.”

Since the shooting at the Pulse nightclub, other commenters have left pornographic images in the comments of Mateen’s Facebook page, condemning his son for attacking LGBT people. But there’s nothing in the videos that suggest Mateen was a religious fundamentalist. His diatribes are more nationalist and engineered for self-aggrandizement and political effect.

In comments after his son was killed by police, Mateen made remarks that seemed to condemn homosexuality on religious grounds, but he subsequently tried to walk them back, suggesting that while he might not personally approve of homosexuality, it was no basis for his son to kill 49 people.

“He doesn’t have the right, nobody has the right to harm anything, anybody,” Mateen told CBS News. “What a person’s lifestyle is, is up to him. It’s a free country. Everybody has their own choice to live the way they want to live.”

And yet his support for the Taliban stands in stark contrast to such live-and-let-live attitudes. The group is notoriously homophobic and has murdered gay men.

Omar Mateen was surely aware of his father’s political views. And according to men who knew the son and said they had talked with him in gay clubs in Orlando, he complained about his strict father.

For his part, Seddique Mateen has insisted that he knows his son wasn’t gay. “He wasn’t gay. I know 90 percent, 95 percent,” Mateen told The Advocate, the influential LGBT news publication. Mateen doesn’t deny that Omar may have gone to gay clubs. “Based on what I’m thinking of, he must have gone scouting or something,” he said, in preparation for the attacks.

But in the interview, Mateen acknowledged that his son–whose childhood misbehaviors he had defended–clearly had hidden a lot about himself. The father said had thought the two were close. “But he fooled me,” Mateen said.

Federal investigators don’t seem convinced. On Friday, Mateen was placed on the federal no-fly list, along with Mateen’s widow, Noor Salman, who has given conflicting accounts about what she knew of Mateen’s plans before the attack. Prosecutors are reportedly bringing evidence to a grand jury, an indication that they intend to charge Salman.

—with additional reporting by Lynn Wadell

Watch this Space for Info on Launch of Expanded Edition

2016 Cover
The 2016 expanded edition of Aboard the Democracy Train is coming soon to Pakistan with a new sub-title, `Pakistan Tracks the Threat Within.’ The book brings readers up to speed with significant changes that have occurred  in the region over the last few years.
 
Beginning with the May 2011 raid by US Navy Seals that avowedly snatched and killed Osama Bin Laden from Abbotabad… to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’s murder of children in Army Public School, Peshawar… the 2016 edition traces the events that ultimately convinced the Pakistan army to change its military strategy.
 
The back drop is the last 1 1/2 decade of war in Afghanistan that threw Pakistan into a whirlpool, making it difficult even for the intelligentsia to understand the twists and turns in the political life of the nation. 
 
The forthcoming edition spells the road that Pakistan took to achieve its success in bringing down terrorist attacks. That trajectory began once the army understood that the real threat “lay within.”
 
Army operations across Pakistan inherently uphold that there can be no economic development without peace.  Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is the face of the business minded government, which has among its major ventures linked Pakistan’s fortunes with China’s Economic Corridor to Gwadar Port.
 
Until then, Pakistan’s `Democracy Train’ goes on, where millions of common people still clamor for the basic necessities of life and the dignity to which all human beings are entitled.
 
Pakistan still struggles with governing an ill fed, barely literate population that has spun out of control and provinces that chafe for their fair share from the center.  Ready to work for pennies, common people feed the wheel of corruption… becoming cannon fodder for unscrupulous mafias clasped around the society like a cobra moving its tongue.
 
‘Aboard the Democracy Train, Pakistan Tracks the Threat Within,’ lays out the current situation from outside in  – hopefully piercing through non transparency and half truths told through the media.
 
It will be available in the first week of July at Paramount Books, Karachi.