The Rock Star and the Mullahs

[Salman Ahmed is a man on a mission: to challenge Pakistan`s hardline mullahs on why they believe music is not allowed in Islam. ]

I watched this documentary. I am wondering if ``mission`` is the correct way to put it. I mean, a ``mission`` is when you are on the losing side of the argument and you are trying to change the equation. Clearly music-hating mullahs have lost this argument looooooong time ago. Music lovers have won (not that they lost it at any time in Islamic history. Music has been alive and kicking throughout Islamic history - Abbasid, Ottoman, Mughal, Safavid empires) Just look around and see the EXPLOSION of music bands in Pakistan in the last 20 years. Not that prior to these 20 years there was any shortage of musicians either.

So not sure if the purpose of this documentary is to convert the converted (that is the music lovers) or to enlighten those music-hating mullahs that they should not look down upon music. If it is the later, then BBC has just spent an enormous capital for a ``mission`` few people care about in Pakistan.

Besides, if Salman is sincere in his attempts to get the answers on why some Mullahs believe that Music is haraam, then getting into ``intellectual`` arguments with a Mullah who believes that ``all the people living in the world`s 52 Islamic nations are the children of swine. `` is perhaps an exercise in futility. You know at that time in documentary that you will not get to hear the compelling arguments against music (believe me, i have heard some `compelling` arguments against music. Not that I have ever subscribed to them. I love U2 way too much). Unless of course, if the documentary is looking for entertainment value for the viewers to increase its ratings.

Bina Shah:

It was time for a Muslim rock star to collide with a Mullah and mullahism. There are almost un-resolvable conflicts between religion and culture. People find difficult to live without culture even if they have to abandon the puritanical faith in the religion, or religion itself if push comes to shove. So the priorities are clear.

The issue of music and singing, and Islam is age-old. People have ignored its implications and moved ahead with their lives. “Happiness is no sin” and what is a better way to express feeling of happiness than by singing. And singing they do.

I haven’t found any direct reference to singing or Mauseeqi in Quran. The closest that I came to the mention of singing in Quran is an interpretation of verse 6, chapter 31 (Luqman) of Quran.

According to Yusuf Ali’s translation, the verse reads as follows:

But there are among men, those who purchase idle tales, without
Knowledge for meaning, to mislead (men) from the Path.

The key word in Quran is “Lah-wal-Hadith”, which Yusuf Ali has translated as “idle tales”. Maudoodi (Tafheem-ul-Quran, Vol. 4, pp. 9-10) has translated it as “kalam-e-dilfareb” meaning approximately “attractive words.” In his interpretation in footnotes, Maudoodi has tied “Lah-wal-Hadith” directly with singing. He has quoted several traditions (Hadith) in support of his claim. According to one of them attributed to Anas, “who ever listens to the songs of a slave singing girl (laundi) will be condemned at the Doom’s Day and molten lead will be poured into his ears.” It’s a great stretch from the text of the Quran.

Mr. Ahmad and other cultural revolutionaries are not going to buy it, and they shouldn’t, and they will justifiably hammer as to why Maudoodi’s interpretation be any weightier than Yusuf Ali’s. Rock music has become a fact of our life and it will remain. So Mullahs should find a way to live with it. The Mullah’s religion needs to be laundered to give it a shine appropriate to the needs of modern times.

Sheikh Abdul Qadir has mentioned in the Preface of Iqbal’s “Baang-e-Dara” that Iqbal at one time had seriously considered abandoning his natural gift of poetry to do something more meaningful. He did not give any specific reason for his thought but there is a religious “slur” on the poets also. Quran has berated the poets also.

What a great cultural loss it would have been had Iqbal abandoned poetry.

Wishing you well,

Mohammad Gill

Interesting and yet another ``ground level`` article on Pakistan.

Finally understood why films and music were absolutely kosher on board buses and inside homes/hotel rooms in Pakistan, television and video seems to be ``always on`` wherever you go in Pakistan . . . . while music is simply not heard in other open public places . . . maybe SOMEBODY needs to pay off the cops and place a few speakers and a link to worldspace in public areas, to start with.

Cacophony, maybe, is what you may get in the beginning, but hey, it has dynamics of its own too, which will resolve soon, right?

I think too many stiff upper lips in Pakistan have spent a couple of generations trying to be ``propah``, now it is time to unwind, stop blaming the Saudis for your own melancholic attributes, and get along, shake a leg. I walked into this cattle/farm animal fair in a little town in Punjab a few months ago when I went walkabout in Pakistan, and Mullah or no Mullah, they had local music blaring from the loudspeakers as well as promise of a ``record dance`` later in the evening with male actors in drag.

Once again, the acoustics and score for Phantom of the Opera at Islamabad Club was, to my discerning ears, about the best I`ve heard lately in our part of the world. Some of the key roles were played by orthodox Haafiz young men.

The question, therefore, should now be changed, and asked again:- ``why is music not allowed (openly) in Pakistan``, instead of Islam.

The possible answer may have to do with something as simple as haftaas to the cops. But when you have even the local English media running for their lives with tails between their legs when the local SHO yells at them, then how would an artiste or singer be expected to push the envelope? All music is also media, and all media is about mind-bending, right?

So, if the mind-benders in Pakistan wish to retain control, then one simple method would be to destroy all other tools of mind-bending. Music, traditions, folklore, ceremonies, happiness . . . all these, and more, replaced by stern dictates. I mean, it took BBC to make a movie on the subject? In and about Pakistan?