Video shops in fear of attacks in Islamabad
ISLAMABAD: Shopkeepers selling CDs and DVDs in the city fear religious extremists will force them to close.
Groups of madrassa students have been going around markets, especially Aabpara Market, in recent days warning shops to shut down because they were “corrupting society”. Shaikh Adnan, who runs a shop in Aabpara Market, told Daily Times that some 10 to 15 male students from a local madrassa had asked him to shut down his business and take up something else.
“They came here a few days ago and told me quite politely to get into some other business,” he said. He in turn asked them for financial assistance. “They directed me to go see the head of the madrassa in this regard but I have not had the time to do so,” he said.
Most shop owners were reluctant to talk about the threat from madrassa students. One shop owner, asking to remain anonymous, said he had been sent a written notice by madrassa students telling him to close his business. “They have given me a one-month deadline,” he said.
He said this was the first time he had received such a threat in 25 years in the business. “I have invested about Rs 1,200,000 and I fail to understand where I can go if I have to do some other thing,” he said. A salesman at one of Islamabad’s leading CD and DVD centers also reported that three religious students had come to his shop. “They told us that this was not an appropriate business,” he said and added that the police came in shortly after they left.
Other shop owners termed the police “mere spectators”. “They came in long after the rounds of the vigilantes,” one businessman said. They said that men from the intelligence agencies also visited them.
Students of Jamia Hafsa and Jamia Fareedia recently took the law into their hands in an “anti-vice drive”, raiding an alleged brothel and kidnapping three women.
The principal of Jamia Hafsa, Umme Hassan, said on Monday that seminary students had no plans to force closures of such businesses. “No action is going to be taken against them, it is just that we are advising them to stop selling porno movies and stuff,” she told journalists. She dismissed the notion that girl students of Jamia Hafsa had threatened the traders. “This is not true, rather burqa-clad personnel from secret agencies have been going round the markets to taint our image,” she claimed. The principal said that a group of traders had been told that no action would be taken against any business.
Source: Daily Times
Date:4/3/2007
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