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Murder of master of Islamic devotional music during Ramadan sends shock waves around Muslim world

For millions of Muslims, the murder of Pakistani qawwali singer Amjad Sabri is about much more than music

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Pakistani singer Amjad Sabri, who was murdered in Karachi after he was accused of blasphemy.
The Washington Post

Last week, the music died.

Amjad Sabri, a master of qawwali, the devotional music that is wildly popular across the Indian subcontinent and well beyond, was gunned down in Karachi, Pakistan, on June 22. A man who spent his life singing the praises of the Prophet Mohammed, continuing a centuries-long tradition of musical veneration, was accused of blasphemy, and he was executed for it.

During Ramadan.

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That is so important, so painful and so hard to make sense of for the many Muslims – particularly for Pakistanis like me – because qawwali is part of our religion. At a time when Islam is reduced to warlike, uncivilised violence and portrayed as an angry, intolerant faith, qawwali is evidence of something different. The historic spread of Islam through much of what we call the Muslim world happened through architecture, calligraphy, poetry, but perhaps above all, music.

In South Asia, home to one-third of the world’s Muslims, preachers and poets composed verse that survived for centuries, as intoxicating as it was unique. Qawwali is the soundtrack of that tradition.

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