The North West Frontier Province government has decided to implement the Shariah Nizam-e-Adal Regulation 1999 in Malakand division by the end of Ramadan in order to fulfil the Taliban's longstanding demand to enforce Islamic laws in Swat.

Provincial Information Minister Iftekhar Hussain said that the draft of Shariah Nizam-e-Adal would be sent to the governor for approval.

Pakistan is to impose Islamic law in a vast region of the north-west called Malakand in an attempt to placate extremists, even as President Asif Zardari warns that they are trying to take over the state.

Pakistani Taliban militants who are in control of the Swat valley in the region announced a ceasefire tonight, reacting to the government's agreement to bring in sharia courts.

Malakand is part of North West Frontier province, a regular part of Pakistan, not the wild tribal area, which runs along the Afghan border.

Critics warned that the new sharia regulations represented a capitulation to the extremists' demands, and that it would be difficult to stop hardliners elsewhere in the country from demanding that their areas also come under Islamic law.

One woman was shot dead and 28 people have been injured in an attack on the Presbyterian Christian community in a village in the province of Pakistan's Punjab.

The attack took place on March 2 when a group of Muslim inhabitants opened fire on the christians who had gathered in the church for prayer. The woman died on the spot, while other members of the congregation suffered injuries of various kinds while they were seeking to flee from the bullets or to protect the pastor. The attackers broke the windows of the church, destroyed the Bibles and the other prayer books, and removed the cross from the roof of the building.

The authors of the attack have been identified, and a report against them has been filed at the local police station. The Pakistan Christian Post says that for now, the security forces have turned down the request for investigations on the attackers.

The attack is added to a long list of violent events that are now being seen more or less everywhere in Punjab and in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The attacks are not coming to an end in the Swat Valley, where a fragile ceasefire has been attained by the government, thanks to the concession of introducing sharia in that district and in the district of Malakand.

During the night of March 5, the Taliban blew up 16 CD and DVD stores in Takhtbhai, northeast of Peshawar, the capital of the NWFP.

Since the beginning of the year, people have been abandoning the Swat Valley by the thousands. These include many families and a number of teachers, who have formally stated that they are going on vacation. One mother who left the district recounts: "All the best teachers from my children's schools have left. I do not think they will go back. According to my relatives there, many children have gone back to school, but there are now too few teachers."

It has been more than a month since the peace deal in Swat but the shopkeepers at Cheena Market, once the busiest in Mingora city, are still waiting for female shoppers.

The Swat-based Taliban had banned females from going to markets and schools for education.

However, girls are back in schools after Taliban leader Fazlullah agreed to a peace bid by his father-in-law, TNSM's chief Sufi Muhammad but women are still avoiding going to bazaars.

The reason for women staying away from the once popular place is obvious – threats from the Taliban. On March 8, a bearded man, who the shopkeepers believed to be a Taliban, pulled out a dagger in a shop and said, Who wants to be beheaded first? The incident was enough to frighten the women and prevent them from going to the markets.

I used to make a good profit when the Taliban had not banned women from going to markets, a shopkeeper said.

Bakht Rawan, who has spent 15 years in Saudi Arabia as a salesman at a cosmetic shop, said he could not believe that the Taliban had disallowed women from going to the bazaars.

If shopping by women was forbidden in Islam, Saudi men would not have allowed their women to go to bazaars. I wonder why these (Taliban) people are offering a new brand of Islam to the people of Swat, Rawan told Daily Times.

Earlier in January, Taliban had banned women from markets in Mingora. The Taliban have ordered the killing of women seen in market areas.

Women are not allowed in this market, banners displayed in a city's market. Following the ban, shopkeepers dealing in women's garments and cosmetics had complained about plummeting sales and disappearance of women customers. They had said that they could not even earn enough to pay the rent and electricity charges.

Update: An End to Polio Vaccinations

25th March 2009. See article from asianews.it, Thanks to Alan

The Taliban have decreed that there shall be no polio vaccination because it causes infertility and because the vaccine was imported.

In Lower Dir, one of the NWFP's 24 districts, Islamic fundamentalists have shut down a family planning centre, warning that it would be blown up if it was reopened it.

Update: An End to Mobile Phones

31st March 2009. Thanks to Alan

The Taliban has warned the government to stop expanding its mobile telephone network in the tribal border region of Waziristan, claiming it would be used to spy on them.

They circulated a pamphlet in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan, telling authorities to stop the network expansion and ordering vendors to stop selling SIM cards. It said the network would be used to spy on Taliban activities and for drone attacks.

This network is equipped with a global positioning system (GPS) and can give the location of a person even if his mobile phone is switched off. In Iraq and Afghanistan such a system has been used to launch attacks against mujahideen. The government and those selling SIMs will be treated as criminals by us, it warned.

This is the chilling moment a 17-year-old Pakistani girl is punished in a horrific flogging by Taliban thugs for being seen with a man who is not her husband.

The girl, who received 37 lashes at the hands of her brother and Taliban forces, has sent shockwaves throughout the once stable Swat Valley region.

The mobile phone footage shows the girl pinned down by two men while a third whips her as she begs for mercy.

Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan claimed responsibility for the flogging in today's Guardian, which obtained footage of the shocking act.

He said it was the Taliban's right to thrash women and that the girl was being punished for coming out of her house with another man who was not her husband.

The girl in the video, named as Chaand, was punished in Matta in the Swat Valley. She did not receive a trial and was punished according to the suspicious of one neighbour.

Pashtun documentary maker Samar Minallah, who lived in Swat for two years in the late 1990s, handed the footage to the media. Ms Minallah said the video is being circulated because the Taliban wanted people to see it: They want to give the message that this is taking place after the peace deal because this is something they ideologically believe in.

Update: Protests against Swat Flogging

5th April 2009. Based on article from nation.com.pk

Citizens of Lahore Saturday took out a peace rally condemning the Swat incident of flogging a young girl in the public gaze as well as to press for the government action for peace in the tribal and other restive areas of the NWFP where the terrorists now call the shots.

A large number of citizens, NGOs, rights organisations, political activists, students, lawyers, and professionals marched on the Punjab Assembly. The participants were carrying banners and placards and throughout the way they continued to chant loud slogans for protecting the life and other rights of the citizens, particularly belonging to Swat and the adjoining areas. The participants of the rally in strong words condemned the spread of Talibanisation in the country.

Asma Jahangir and others on the occasion strongly condemned the Swat incident and the growing influence of Taliban in Swat, Dir and other parts. They said the situation was becoming threatening with every passing day as the Taliban influence had reached the urban areas as well. The speakers called for practical steps to curb the menace of terrorism and violence on women.

Condemning the incident, Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid’s President Zia Ahmed Awan said that Islam does not allow punishments based on injustice and brutality without conducting proper inquiry and following the set procedure. He said that it is a shameful incident and in clear violation of human rights, specially children and women rights. He lauded the Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry for taking suo motu action of the incident.

Update: Back to the Dark Ages.

22nd April 2009. See article from dailytimes.com.pk Thanks to Alan

Human Rights Watch (HWR) urged Pakistan to reverse its decision to enforce sharia in Swat, saying the deal threatens women and takes the region back to the Dark Ages.

The rights group said the government’s move amounted to granting the Taliban control presents a grave threat to the rights of women and other basic rights in the troubled region.

The Taliban are taking Swat back to the Dark Ages and the Pakistani government is now complicit in their horrific abuses, a HWR spokesman said.

Update: No room for democracy in Islam

24th April 2009. See article from timesofindia.indiatimes.com Thanks to Alan

Hardline cleric Sufi Muhammad, who played a key role in enforcing Islamic law in Pakistan's restive northwestern Swat valley, said there is no room for democracy in Islam and it contravenes the Quran.

The chief of the banned Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariah Muhammadi (TNSM) described democracy as an un-Islamic system. The existing political system in the country contravenes Islam and the Quran, he claimed.

Asserting that there is no room for democracy in an Islamic system, he accused Pakistan's rulers of appeasing the West by thrusting the system of 'kafirs' or infidels on the people of the country.

The Taliban, emboldened by their success in Swat Valley and advance near Islamabad, have attacked a Christian neighborhood and executed two residents after Christians held a rally protesting graffiti ordering them to convert to Islam or die.

On the night of the protest, April 21, more than 100 masked terrorists invaded Taseer Town with automatic rifles. The terrified Christian residents ran to their homes and locked themselves inside.

According to Asif Stephen, a Christian politician, one of the protesters said, We were protesting peacefully and all of sudden, a few militants carrying the latest weapons rushed in. Some of the attackers entered homes and pillaged money and jewelry and abused the women and burned their properties. The elderly were injured and one child fell to the ground and died in my friend's arms.

The terrorists sexually assaulted several women and physically abused dozens more with clubs, iron rods, and whips. They set a number of homes on fire. When two Christians resisted, the militants killed them execution-style directly in front of their families. The identity of those killed has not yet been confirmed.

According to AsiaNews, police have arrested seven of the Taliban militants involved in the attack.

Update: Music to Shave To

27th April 2009. See article from digitaljournal.com

Self-proclaimed definers of Islamic law, the Taliban have begun giving out punishments for breaching their bizarre version of Sharia law. Four men were shaven, (a punishment indeed, when beards are a cultural symbol) for listening to music.

Their deaths were squalid, riddled with bullets in a field near their home by Taliban gunmen as the execution was captured on a mobile telephone.

In footage which is being watched with horror by Pakistanis, the couple try to flee when they realise what is about to happen. But a gunman casually shoots the man and then the woman in the back with a burst of gunfire, leaving them bleeding in the dirt.

Moments later, when others in the execution party shout out that they are still alive, he returns to coldly finish them with a few more rounds.

Their 'crime' was an alleged affair in their remote mountain village controlled by militants in an area that was only recently under the government's sway. It was the kind of barbarity that has become increasingly familiar across Pakistan as the Taliban tide has spread.

In the past few days the footage has circulated among Pakistanis who usually show little interest in the rough ways of the distant frontier regions. They have now started to wake up to the fear that al-Qaeda-linked rebels from the frontier could take over their nation.

In an extraordinary move, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called on the people of Pakistan to defy their government, saying they need to speak out forcefully against a policy that is ceding more and more territory to the insurgents.

The Taliban are steady and confident, the government is weak and faltering, said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University and one of Pakistan's leading intellectuals: A Taliban victory will enslave our women, destroy Pakistan's rich historical and cultural heritage, make education and science impossible, and make the lives of its citizens impossibly difficult. Some are already contemplating an exodus.

The Taliban have demolished 11 houses of the Sikh community in the Orakzai Agency for refusing to pay ‘Jazia’.

The action was ordered by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan chief for Orakzai Agency, Hakeemullah Mehsud, after the deadline given to the Sikh community for payment of Jazia passed.

The Taliban had asked the long established Sikh community living in the tribal area earlier this month to pay annual Jazia because Sharia had been enforced in the area and every non-Muslim had to pay protection money.

A local jirga ruled that the Sikh community should annually pay Rs.15 million ($187,000) as protection money. Earlier reports had said the Taliban had demanded Rs.50 million but that this had been reduced.

The Sikh community comprising 30 to 35 families shifted from the Feroze Khel area to the nearby Merozai in Lower Orakzai Agency because they could not arrange Rs150 million demanded by the Taliban.

Update: Taliban attack christians in Karachi

4th May 2009. Based on article from asianews.it, Thanks to Alan

Irfan Masih, the 11-yeaar-old boy wounded on 22 April during a Taliban attack against Christians in Tiasar Town near Karachi, has died.

On 22 April a gang of armed muslim extremists attacked a group of Christians in Tiasar Town, a Karachi suburb, setting six homes on fire and seriously injuring three Christians. One of them was Irfan Masih.

The Taliban attacked the Christians because they were wiping off insulting graffiti from the walls of local homes and the local church. The Taliban had scribbled words that incited hatred and violence, like Taliban are coming, Long live Taliban and Be prepared to pay Jizia (Tax for non-Muslims) or embrace Islam.

Christian activists have complained that police from the nearby Surjani station stood idly by when the attack took place.

As an explanation of their inaction, the agents said that both Christians and Muslims opened fire.

However, only Christians were hurt or killed. Five Muslims were arrested, caught brandishing weapons used during the attack.

Angry protests are a common sight in Pakistan but in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore this week, several hundred protesters gathered on a scorching day to take on a very different target: the Taliban.

I will fight them to my last breath and the last drop of my blood in my body. I'm not scared, vowed newspaper publisher Jugnu Mohsin.

She was leading a crowd of several hundred students, artists, writers and others, chanting the Taliban is the enemy of Islam in Urdu.

Public protests against the Taliban started cropping up in various Pakistani cities after a video emerged showing militants publicly flogging a teenage girl. The Taliban's recent declaration that the Pakistani government and judicial system are unIslamic has also outraged many educated Pakistanis.

Students and others in Lahore fear that the Taliban's version of sharia -- which forbids girls from attending school, as well as music, poetry and dance -- is slowly creeping into Lahore, the center of Pakistani culture.

They're here in Lahore, this is the thing, said Jamal Rahman, who plays guitar for the Lahore-based band, "Lal" which means "Red": Little groups of the Taliban are going around and intimidating people, causing fear, telling women to cover up and if they don't they'll shoot them.

It is unclear if the protests and rallying cries from Rahman and the others in Lahore are the start of a mass movement or simply the swan song of Pakistan's wealthy, urban elite who could be the first to leave if the suicide bombers and insurgents succeed in further destabilizing the country. Either way, their message is a sign that more Pakistanis believe the Taliban's threat is directed at them, and not just a reaction to the so-called U.S.-led war on terror.

What the protestors are up against

See article from dailytimes.com.pk

It is un-Islamic for anyone to be photographed, Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) chief Sufi Muhammad has said.

Talking on TV, he said any duplicated image of a person, whether a still picture or video was un-Islamic. Referring to the various systems of governance, he said democracy, communism, socialism and fascism were all un-Islamic.

Focusing on democracy, he said it was un-Islamic, as infidels invented it: I would not offer prayer behind anyone who would seek to justify democracy. How can people who believe in democracy be expected to enforce the ideals of sharia.

On the status of women in a Taliban-run society, he said women were not allowed to come out of their house for any reason other than to perform Haj. However, he added, a female patient was allowed to visit a male doctor to seek a cure for her ailments.

Lashkar-e-Islam (LI, an Islamic militant group) has imposed jazia, an Islamic tax, to the non-Muslim communities, including Sikhs, Hindus and Christians living in Khyber Agency, a tribal agency of North West Frontier Post (NWFP) near Afghanistan's border and which is under the control of militants.

The warning came from LI on May 31 following which the community agreed to pay the tax instead of leaving the area, where they are living for decades.

The minority communities had many meetings with the local militant group but LI was not ready to give any concession to the minority community. They were told that they are not Muslim so they have to pay jazia.

The media reports say that only women, children and handicapped persons had been exempted from paying the tax, while other members of the communities would be bound to pay Rs1,000 (US$12.5) per head annually.

Jazia is an Islamic tax which is being imposed by an Islamic state to its non-Muslim subjects. Though Pakistan is an Islamic state, the state has never imposed jazia to its religious minorities. Some radical Muslim religious leaders have been demanded for it but this undemocratic demand never gets public support.

Pakistan's Khyber Agency political administration is not issuing domicile certificates to Christian inhabitants.

Khyber Agency Christian Community Chairman Arshad Masih said, We have contacted the political agent, the (NWFP) governor and (Federal) Minorities Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti for issuance of domicile certificates, but no action has been taken so far. We cannot apply for jobs without our domiciles.

Landikotal Assistant Political Agent (APA) Azam Jan Khalil said, The Christians are not permanent residents of the Tribal Areas. That is why we have not issued them domicile certificates. The tribal people were also against the issuance of the certificates to the Christians.

A senior member of the community said the government had given permanent residential rights to the Sikh community of the agency, but the Christians had been denied the same right.

It was the Taleban's demand to take the women they had widowed that was the last straw for the residents of Upper Dir.

When the militants arrived in their mountainous corner of northwestern Pakistan in February the locals cautiously welcomed them. Some even joined them, attracted by the five or six pounds a day they paid. Over the next three months, however, Upper Dir's residents were increasingly angered by the Taleban's criminal activities and disrespect for local customs, according to residents and Pakistani officials.

In early June elders asked them to leave the five villages they had occupied. The Taleban responded on June 5 with a suicide attack on a local mosque that killed 39 people. The next day they told the elders to give them the women who had been widowed in the attack.

Instead, the elders summoned men from 30 surrounding villages, told them to fetch their weapons (many men in the region own a gun), and launched a “lashkar” — or tribal militia — of more than 1,000 people to drive out the Taleban.

They shot dead the local Taleban leader — who went by the name of Champo — burnt several more to death in the houses that they had occupied, and surrounded the remaining 150 in a mountainside village, where they were still under siege.

The head of Pakistan's radical Lal Masjid, Abdul Aziz, has threatened the Pakistan Government of launching a bloody revolution, if the Zardari-led coalition fails to enforce an Islamic system in the country through parliament.

Addressing the Second Shuhda-e-Lal Masjid Conference at the Lal Masjid, Aziz said the government has not been able to make any progress in the probe into the Lal Masjid Operation, which took place two years ago, the Daily Times reports.

Speaking on the occasion, member of the NWFP assembly Mufti Kifayatullah demanded the government cease its military operation in the province and initiate a dialogue with the Taliban. He alleged that Pakistan Army was killing its own people at the behest of the US.

Fighters linked to the militant Taliban group have threatened to kill Christians and burn their homes in Pakistan's Punjab province if they don't meet their demands.

In a letter sent to the Christian community in the northeastern city of Sargodha, Taliban militants said Christians should convert to Islam, pay an Islamic tax imposed on religious minorities, known as Jizya tax, or leave the country.

If Christians refuse to accept these choices, Christians will be killed, their property and homes will be burnt to ashes and their women treated as sex slaves, said the letter, which was distributed to Worthy News and its partner agency BosNewsLife by rights group International Christian Concern (ICC). The Christians themselves would be responsible for this, the letter added.

News of the statement emerged as Pakistan's army prepared for a ground offensive elsewhere in Pakistan, in South Waziristan, following a string of brazen attacks, believed to be part of a Taliban campaign, that killed more than 150 people in the last two weeks.

A Taliban court amputated the hands of five people charged with theft in the Orakzai Agency, North West Pakistan.

Sources told Daily Times that the Taliban court administrated the decision in Dabori area of the agency, and the people were amputated in the presence of several tribesmen.

Pakistani Taliban facing a fierce government military operation in a tribal area severed the right hands of three alleged thieves after a Taliban Islamic court found them guilty.

The amputees, who were brought to a hospital in the northeastern city of Kohat for excessive bleeding, accused the Taliban of victimizing them for belonging to the area of a former Taliban commander who broke away from the group, according to media reports.

Performances by the famous dancing girls of the Pakistani city of Lahore have come to an end because of increasing cfears of violent attacks.

As the BBC's Haroon Rashid reports, Pakistan's deteriorating law and order situation - including bomb blasts near the bazaar where the girls operated - has forced them into prostitution and other risky ventures.

This old neighbourhood of crumbling buildings is no more a place for men to stray from their arranged marriages and spend time with beautiful women trained in the arts of song, dance and seduction.

Just a few days ago, the women of this area, popularly known as Heera Mandi, used to attract men by wearing these anklets. The vast majority of dancing girls did exactly as their name suggest - dance for a male clientele. Only a handful worked in the sex trade.

Lahore police spokesman Shahzad Asif Khan says that officers were unable to provide the women with adequate security: This was a centuries-old culture. But unfortunately, over a period of time - and especially in the last seven or eight years - extremism has grown. In the last 10 months alone, there have been cracker blasts forcing the few remaining women to leave. The dancing girls' culture is almost non-existent now.

ActionAid researcher Daud Saqlain fears the future will not bode well for former dancing girls, some of whom have been forced into prostitution because hardliners objected to them performing relatively innocuous dances in public: Over the last decade we have seen the unfortunate growth of home-based sex work. Because of poverty and limited opportunities, some women have had no choice but to switch from dancing to sex work.

While some women have moved to other areas of the city, others have headed to far-off places such as Britain and the United Arab Emirates. Many former dancers have not turned to prostitution but have adjusted to the security threat by setting up their own websites to attract affluent customers to privately owned houses in middle-class areas.

Historian Dr Mubarak Ali told the BBC that the end of the dancing girls tradition was another nail in the coffin of Lahore's artistic and cultural heritage, which had been whittled away by radicalisation since the 1970s: Lahore before partition was a very cosmopolitan city. Women rode bikes and no-one objected to it. But the winds of change started blowing because of the support given by former dictator Gen Zia ul-Haq to religious groups.

All Pakistani music festivals, theatre performances and other events have stopped being hosted here because of the fear of terrorism.

Update: Dance banned from Lahore's theatres

20th February 2011. Based on article from minivannews.com

The Lahore Arts Council's (LAC) decision to ban all dance performances besides classical dance in commercial theatre plays has infuriated producers and artistes who believe the LAC is trying to damage their business. The decision was made to facilitate quality theatre, claimed an LAC spokesperson when asked about the ban.

How many films are made in Pakistan annually? From the handful that are made how many have songs that we can use in our plays? If we don't have performances on Indian songs and cannot include any dance performances other than classical dance, then what are we left with, said the chairman of Commercial Theatre Producers Association, Chaudhary Zulfiqar Ahmad.

Some artistes and producers don't follow certain moral standards when including dance performances in their plays, they should be banned -- not the dances. Only a limited section of audience appreciates classical dance while large numbers of theatregoers have little or no interest in such performances. This ban will have major financial repercussions on commercial theatre at the LAC, he added.

Suggesting a remedy to the vulgarity in commercial theatre, Ahmad said that the arts councils should strictly censor the scripts and not impose a ban. The script of a play is first approved by the LAC and the Punjab Arts Council and only then is it sent to the Home Department for clearance. Writers on the panel of the arts council approve the scripts. Each script submitted mentions the dance performances included in a play. If the arts council has objections to any dance performance or dialogue, it should censor that instead of making a rule to ban all dances featuring Indian songs. As far as Indian songs are concerned, many of them are sung by Pakistani singers and are popular here. If we can allow them in the form of CDs, DVDs and screen them in our cinemas, why then can't we include them in our stage plays, questioned another producer who is doing plays at Alhamra, he spoke condition of anonymity.