Posted on 01/16/2004 6:20:16 AM PST by blam
Afghanistan's female singers silenced again
January 16 2004 at 01:40PM
Kabul - They were on air but now they've been silenced. After breaking a decade-long ban and airing images of a woman singing on Afghanistan's state-run television earlier in the week, Kabul TV has decided to stop showing female singers for the time being.
The decision to stop showing images of women singing follows strong protests from the Afghan Supreme Court, which favours the imposition of Islamic sharia laws in the war-torn country.
The court is dominated by the conservative former mujahedin or anti-Soviet fighters.
"No official decision has been taken. However, we feel the current circumstances are not suitable to air women singing," Azizullah Aryanfar, programming chief of Kabul TV said on Friday.
'No official decision has been taken'
He said the television station had not received a letter from the High Court preventing it from airing such programmes but confirmed that Kabul TV has decided to stop showing females singing "at least for the time being".
"We knew this kind of move might be too early, and is not acceptable in the many conservative circles which have strong influence in the country," Aryanfar said, referring to the former mujahedin leaders who form the backbone of President Hamid Karzai's US-backed government.
On Monday night, Kabul TV featured old footage of Salma, a star from the 1970s, singing a ballad about being a refugee. Instead of being totally covered up, she was wore a simple head scarf.
Her five-minute appearance on TV came just days after Afghanistan's loya jirga or grand assembly approved a new constitution which states that men and women have equal rights and duties under law.
But the Supreme Court wrote in protest to the ministry of information and culture ordering the moderate minister Sayed Makhdoom Raheen to stop broadcasting women singing and dancing on the national broadcaster.
The ban on women had been imposed for more than a decade since the mujahedin took power in Kabul after toppling a communist government in 1992.
The harsh Taliban regime, even more extremist in their beliefs, which took power in 1996, banned all television broadcasting to impose strict Islamic sharia law. - Sapa-AFP
Friggin' fundamentalists! Shari'a does not say this, but it can get interpreted to if you have a fundamentalist, woman-hating cultural background (kind of like America-hating liberals interpreting the Constitution). It's generally considered that some women may want to get more "in touch" with Allah by going overboard and completely hiding themselves. That's a personal decision I'm fine with, kind of like the monks and others who go overboard in their Christian worship through silence, deprivation or self-flagellation. Unfortunately, woman-hating religious leaders start mandating these practices to the point of the rediculous.
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