Music in Pakistan

To the author:

Your last paragraphs deserve their own thread lest their force find insufficient expression. I agree that the opposition to music prescribed by so many Muslims is a tragedy. It has warped Pakistani culture considerably. But all Muslims suffer somewhat under this yoke, if only because such blind opposition to music engenders much hypocrisy and ruin.

Though music may be a matter of taste, so that beauty is in the ear of the listener; beautiful music cannot be denied by the one who knows it. So the opposing listener must harden his heart to that beauty and to the joy which follows. Opposing the source of that joy, the listener curses himself by refusing to admit the joy to his heart, and curses others by teaching a distrust of that joy.

One result is the virulent hypocrite who listens avidly in private and craves the very joy he so vociferously condemns in public. The other is the bitter and equally accursed heart that perversely reacts to joy with loathing. The first encourages the curse on the second. The latter in their numbers enforce the curse of the former.

What of those who hear the beauty and refuse the craven paths of the hypocrite and the ruined, but instead profess the joy of music as good? Such a person may blame his faith, when what that person really has is proof that those persons who claimed to be guides had lost their own way.

But I think that the advocates of extreme opposition to music face an ever-growing backlash from those who see in such proscriptions reason to oppose all of the extremists’ positions. It will be a good day for Pakistan when such extremists are forced from the fore.

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When I was a college student, I met non-desi Americans who were fans of ``Indian classical music.`` They did not like Hindi movie music because they saw it as too commercial. They preferred their Indian music a bit too dry for my taste.

We could find common ground in Western music, but I think it would have been fun to explore then our musical tastes in Indian and Pakistani music in the way that you have done.


whistler#47
Trishul was a great movie! ;-)

tahmed32#46
Blue Eyes had an aura, but his lack of regret does not do him credit if you know much about his life. Now Dean Martin on the other hand, well, he sang from the ache in his soul.

Nice Hamid, really enjoyed reading it :)