Musharraf is going to have to crack down on these people. Can he survive doing so?
Pakistan music shops blown up
(AFP)
22 April 2007
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.
There has been growing concern about the "Talebanisation" of Pakistan and the introduction of Islamic sharia law in areas along the Afghan border where last month two men and a woman were stoned and shot to death for adultery.
The Taleban outlawed music and most other forms when they were in power.
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