By Nadia Jajja

Illegally run FM radio stations have become powerful tools in the hands of mullahs. Their use has continued unabated not only in Swat but also in its adjoining districts and tribal agencies. In fact, on May 17, an Inter-Services Public Relations statement said that 36 illegal radio stations were operating in Sultanwas, Buner. Such unchecked proliferation of radio stations has helped swell the ranks of Taliban sympathisers, which in turn affects the war on militancy. Pakistani authorities, however, have made only half-hearted efforts to block these illicit radio channels while the US seems to have woken to the danger they cause rather belatedly. Here’s a low-down on what entails radio station jamming.

Aurangzaib Khan, manager media development at Internews, says that three religious radio stations operate in Khyber Agency. When tensions among different groups heightened, local warlords appeared on radio, threatened people, raised their number and created divisions and conflicts for the state.
 

Special report: A threat yet far


By Muhammad Badar Alam

Despite the rise of militant religion, vulnerable communities in Punjab are too busy dealing with socio-economic problems to roll over for Talibanisation
— just yet

What do Ajmal Kasab, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and Hafiz Mohammad Saeed have in common? Geography. Besides their shared jihadi lineage and alleged links to terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November 2008, all three come from central Punjab — from Okara, Gujranwala and Sargodha districts respectively.
Of the three districts, Gujranwala has seen vigilante justice à la Taliban the most. A few weeks ago, activists of

Shabab-e-Milli, Jamaat-e-Islami’s youth wing, ransacked a bridal make-up competition. On February 20, 2007, provincial minister Zill-e-Huma Usman was shot dead because the murderer believed that women becoming ministers was un-Islamic. In April 2005, armed religious workers led by Qazi Hameedullah, then a member of the National Assembly, disrupted a marathon. And in 2003 the same lawmaker led a mob to burn a circus. Add to all this the fact that Gujranwala is home to some of Pakistan’s largest madrasahs with openly sectarian identities and its credentials as an area vulnerable to Talibanisation become stronger.
 

cover: Rah-e-Rast
Are we on the right path?
 

Born and raised in Peshawar, Nadir is a young Pakhtun who moved to Islamabad a few years ago. Dressed casually in jeans and a shirt – cigarettes and cellphone in hand – he is completely at home in this café filled with other young residents of Islamabad. Like most young men here, he will eventually tell stories of drunken evenings too.

Over sips of cappuccino that day, however, the conversation turns to the internally displaced persons’ (IDPs) camps that he visited less than a week ago. Talking of the anger that he witnessed there, he narrates one experience in particular. “People were willingly telling my colleague about the atrocities the Taliban committed and how the army was hunting them down. Then they turned to me and said, ‘He is Punjabi and we can’t tell him the truth. But the reality is that nothing is happening up there.’”
 

By Iman Sheikh

Grandiose weddings take a back seat as financial constraints take priority
 

Nusrat Khan smiled as she looked up — strings of fairy lights glittered above her in the gauzy tent. Idly, she sniffed the white orchid in her hand. Dozens more like it were flown in for one purpose only: to accent the floral centrepiece of every white-linen-covered table. She had spent hours, after all, carefully selecting them to coordinate with the orange and purple chiffon on the walls. To her left, uniformed waiters balanced trays of champagne.

 Behind her, projector screens stood high to make sure no one missed her daughter’s friends performing the dances they had been practicing for five weeks. Good thing she had gotten the number of that sweet young choreographer. He had tried to refuse a few times but she was not having it. It was 2006 and she was going to give her little Sana the wedding of her dreams. How fortunate, she mused, that 800 of her closest friends would be there to see it.
Khan thinks of that evening often. Today, the wedding planner’s quote rang in at just over 1,430,000 rupees for the decoration of the Pearl Continental Hotel’s Marquee — not for food or for rental, just for takhts, flowers and decor. More or less the same people who attended Sana’s wedding three years ago would have to be invited to Zehra’s nuptials as well. Her bank balance, however, said otherwise. Reluctantly, she began striking names off the guest list. Her youngest daughter would just have to understand.  
 

Perhaps one of the first studies of the projection of Muslims in the media was undertaken by Edward Said. Covering Islam, published in 1981, decades before the events of 9/11, put a new spin on the issue. As the following quote from Said’s preface in Covering Islam indicates, Muslim stereotypes in the Western media predate the events that finally put them in the full glare of the media spotlight: “For the right, Islam represents barbarism; for the left, medieval theocracy; for the centre, a kind of distasteful exoticism. In all camps, however, there is agreement that even though little enough is known about the Islamic world there is not much to be approved of there.”

Several decades later, media coverage of Muslims has become an issue that is widely – and hotly – debated. And it is not restricted to the west alone. Both the demography and history of India have implications for the kind of image projected of Indian Muslims in the country’s media. India has close to 160 million Muslims. They form not only the largest minority group, but also carry with them the baggage of history and the burden of proving their allegiance to the majority. With this selection, Ather Farooqui, a freelance writer living in New Delhi, has presented a range of opinions on the images of Muslims in the media. The diversity of opinions and analyses reflect the diversity of the country itself and positions range from painfully honest to defensive and simplistic.