Kashmiri women ignore Islamic group's threat to cover up , and risk acid being thrown in their faces...
story.news.yahoo.com
Mon Apr 1, 7:05 AM ET
By MUJTABA ALI AHMAD, Associated Press Writer
SRINAGAR, India - Women in Indian-controlled Kashmir (news - web sites) ignored a deadline Monday by an Islamic militant group demanding that they wear a head-to-toe cloak and veil or risk acid being thrown in their face.
Homemakers and college students went about their business in Srinagar, the summer capital of the northern Indian state of Jammu-Kashmir, in their traditional tunics and baggy pants. Most of them covered their heads with a loose scarf, but not the all-encompassing burqa.
No incidents of acid attacks were reported in Srinagar on Monday, said a police official on condition of anonymity.
Lashkar-e-Jabbar, an Islamic militant group that seeks Kashmir's separation from India, had set April 1 as the deadline for women in Kashmir to wear the burqa outside of their homes. In a press statement issued two weeks ago, the group had threatened to throw acid in the faces of Muslim women who did not comply with their order.
"Covering the face or wearing a black cloak is no measure of a woman's morality. Our traditional clothes are decent enough," said Saima Shah, a postgraduate student at the University of Kashmir.
Traditionally, Kashmiri women dress conservatively and even young girls rarely venture out without their heads covered with a scarf or a shawl. Jeans or trousers are rarely worn.
More than a dozen Islamic militant groups have been fighting Indian security forces since 1989, seeking independence for Kashmir or its merger with Islamic Pakistan.
The insurgency has coincided with the rise of hardline Islamic groups who have tried to impose a more rigid interpretation of Islam in Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan and was at the root of two wars between the South Asian nuclear rivals.
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