Dancing & Drumming at Lahore Sufi festival

Lahore Journal: Mystical Form of Islam Suits Sufis in Pakistan (New York Times, 25 February 2010)

'Thousands of Muslim worshipers paid tribute to the patron saint of this eastern Pakistani city this month by dancing, drumming and smoking pot. It is not an image one ordinarily associates with Pakistan, a country whose tormented western border region dominates the news. But it is an important part of how Islam is practiced here, a tradition that goes back a thousand years to Islam’s roots in South Asia.

It is Sufism, a mystical form of Islam brought into South Asia by wandering thinkers who spread the religion east from the Arabian Peninsula. They carried a message of equality that was deeply appealing to indigenous societies riven by caste and poverty. To this day, Sufi shrines stand out in Islam for allowing women free access.

In modern times, Pakistan’s Sufis have been challenged by a stricter form of Islam that dominates in Saudi Arabia. That orthodox, often political Islam was encouraged in Pakistan in the 1980s by the American-supported dictator, Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. Since then, the fundamentalists’ aggressive stance has tended to eclipse that of their moderate kin, whose shrines and processions have become targets in the war here.

But if last week’s stomping, twirling, singing, drumming kaleidoscope of a crowd is any indication, Sufism still has a powerful appeal. “There are bomb blasts all around, but people don’t stay away,” said a 36-year-old bank teller named Najibullah. “When the celebration comes, people have to dance.”

Worshipers had come from all over Pakistan to commemorate the death of the saint, Ali bin Usman al-Hajveri, an 11th-century mystic. Known here today as Data Ganj Baksh, or Giver of Treasures, the Persian-speaking mystic journeyed to Lahore with Central Asian invaders, according to Raza Ahmed Rumi, a Pakistani writer and expert on Sufism. He settled outside the city, a stopover on the trade route to Delhi, started a meditation center and wrote a manual on Sufi practices, Mr. Rumi said... (full article here)

Dancing in Lahore

'Lahore is a city that has to fight for its cultural survival. The growing influence of the Taliban, although hundreds of kilometres to the north-west, has been mirrored by a more insidious, creeping attack on culture throughout the country. On Jan 2, the bullet-ridden body of Shabana Gul, a dancing girl, was dumped in the centre of Mingora, the north-western district of Swat’s main town.But the growing cultural conservatism has had more subtle reverberations.In December, Lahore’s High Court barred the graceful and elaborate dancing girls, who first developed in the Moghal courts 400 years ago, from performing in public, on the grounds that they were too sexually explicit.

A group of theatre owners challenged the ban, which forbade the girls to dance barefoot and ordered them to cover their heads and shoulders, and won an appeal in court in March.A cultural promoter, said the ban on dance – known as the mujra, and which officials attempted to ban during the 1980s – is a symptom of a more dangerous trend in Pakistani society.“If the government engages in moral policing, it gives vigilantes licence to do the same. It fuels intolerance and de-secularisation by violence and intimidation and opens the door to extreme jihadi Islamic movements,” he said. In March, the High Court barred two female singers from recording new albums after ruling that they sang sexually explicit lyrics'.

Full story in the National, 17 May 2009; see also CNN 3 May 2009.

Ayman Udas: a Singer Murdered in Pakistan

'A rising musical star was allegedly shot dead by her own brothers in the conservative city of Peshawar in Pakistan last week after she had appeared on television. The murder of Ayman Udas, who was in her early thirties and newly married, has shocked the city’s artistic community because it symbolises a backlash against women and cultural freedom in an area that is increasingly dominated by Islamic fundamentalists.

As a singer and song writer in her native Pashto, the language of the tribal areas and the NorthWest Frontier province, Udas frequently performed on PTV, the state-run channel. She won considerable acclaim for her songs but had become a musician in the face of bitter opposition from her family, who believed it was sinful for a woman to perform on television.

Ashamed of her growing popularity her two brothers are reported to have entered her flat last week while her husband was out and fired three bullets into her chest. Neither has been caught' (Sunday Times, 3 May 2009 - full story here)

Anti-music Islamists Destroy Shrine

William Dalrymple on the destruction of a Sufi shrine in Pakistan (full article in yesterday's Observer):

'Rahman Baba, "the Nightingale of Peshawar," was an 18th-century poet and mystic, a sort of North West Frontier version of Julian of Norwich... For centuries, Rahman Baba's shrine at the foot of the Khyber Pass has been a place where musicians and poets have gathered, and his Sufi verses in the Pukhtun language made him the national poet of the Pathans. As a young journalist covering the Soviet-mujahideen conflict I used to visit the shrine to watch Afghan refugee musicians sing their songs to their saint by the light of the moon.

Then, about 10 years ago, a Saudi-funded Wahhabi madrasa was built at the end of the track leading to the shrine. Soon its students took it on themselves to halt what they saw as unIslamic practices. On my last visit, I talked about the situation with the shrine keeper, Tila Mohammed. He described how young Islamists now came and complained that his shrine was a centre of idolatry and superstition: "My family have been singing here for generations," said Tila. "But now these Arab madrasa students come here and create trouble. "They tell us that what we do is wrong. They ask people who are singing to stop. Sometimes arguments break out - even fist fights. This used to be a place where people came to get peace of mind. Now when they come here they just encounter more problems, so gradually have stopped coming."

... Behind the violence lies a long theological conflict that has divided the Islamic world for centuries. Rahman Baba believed passionately in the importance of music, poetry and dancing as a path for reaching God, as a way of opening the gates of Paradise. But this use of poetry and music in ritual is one of the many aspects of Sufi practice that has attracted the wrath of modern Islamists. For although there is nothing in the Qur'an that bans music, Islamic tradition has always associated music with dancing girls and immorality, and there is a long tradition of clerical opposition.

At Attock, not far from the shrine of Rahman Baba, stands the Haqqania, one of the most radical madrasas in South Asia. Much of the Taliban leadership, including its leader, Mullah Omar, were trained here, so I asked the madrasa's director, Maulana Sami ul-Haq, about what I had heard at Rahman Baba's tomb. The matter was quite simple." Music is against Islam" he said. 'Musical instruments lead men astray and are sinful. They are forbidden, and these musicians are wrongdoers.'

...Later, I returned to the shrine and found Tila Mahommed tending the grave. Making sure no one was listening, he whispered: "We pray that right will overpower wrong, that good will overcome evil. But our way is pacifist," he said." As Baba put it, 'I am a lover, and I deal in love. Sow flowers, So your surroundings become a garden. Don't sow thorns; for they will prick your feet.We are all one body, Whoever tortures another, wounds himself''.

I thought of this conversation, when I heard that the shrine of Rahman Baba had finally been blown up on Thursday, a few hours after the Sri Lankan cricketers were ambushed in Lahore'.

Pakistan: Eunuch Dancers Protest

The Hijras of Pakistan, sometimes described as 'eunuchs', are generally gay transvesites/transsexuals, some of whom have had some kind of sex change operation. Life for them is tough, with harrassment and poverty. For many of them, dancing at weddings and other functions is a key source of income. They have been organising in defence of their rights, as shown in this week's protests following the arrest of several Hijras on their way home from dancing:

'Over 100 eunuchs on Tuesday protested against Taxila police’s alleged excesses outside the senior superintendent of police’s (SSP) office. Shemale Rights President Bobby led the protestors, who carried placards and banners with messages against police. A large number of policemen and traffic wardens stayed up there until the eunuchs dispersed following the suspension of three policemen accused of torturing, looting and detaining five eunuchs in Taxila...

Bobby told reporters that the three policemen in question had held five eunuchs from a village on January 23 night when they were on the way home after performing at a dance function. She alleged policemen tortured eunuchs and snatched Rs 150,000 cash, jewelry and five cellphones from them during confinement. She demanded that eunuchs be released and culpable policemen be punished.

(Pakistan Daily Times, 28 January 2009)

As many as three eunuchs sustained wounds in police baton-charge when they tried to go to the SSP’s office for withdrawal of an FIR [First Information Report] against their colleagues who were booked at a function in Taxila and sent to the Adiala Jail. Police baton-charged eunuchs, including Bobby, Sana and Gul, in front of the SSP’s office near Peshawar Road. They were protesting against the arrest of eunuchs at a function in Nawababad, Taxila. Police had arrested Sitara, Aalia, Robina, Saim and Akmal when they were dancing at a function on January 23 and sent them to the Adiala Jail. All Pakistan Eunuchs Association President Bobby told ‘The News’ that the Taxila Police had arrested five eunuchs when they were dancing at a function and sent them to the jail after registering cases against them. Police also snatched Rs150,000 from them, Bobby added. According to Bobby, the arrested eunuchs had not committed any crime rather they were dancing which is the only source income for them. Bobby said that eunuchs wanted to stage a peaceful protest but police baton-charged them in which three eunuchs were wounded...

Earlier, some 200 eunuchs gathered in front of the SSP’s office and blocked the Peshawar Road. They carried banners and placards inscribed with different slogans against police. When they tried to enter the office of the SSP (operation), police officials started beating them with batons. In retaliation, eunuchs pelted stones and eggs on police. They tore uniforms of some police officials during the scuffle that continued for half an hour. They also broke windowpanes of SSP’s office. However the situation was controlled after SSP (operation) Sardar Maqsood reached the spot. The traffic on Peshawar Road remained blocked during the clash between police and eunuchs.

(The News - Pakistan - 28 January 2009)