Daily Times, May 18, 2006
Amend 900 laws: CII Govt considering including Qaris in culture troupes
By Shahzad Raza
ISLAMABAD: The government is considering including Qaris (Holy Quran readers) in cultural troupes, Federal Culture Minister Ghazi Gulab Jamal told the Senate on Wednesday.
Jamal told the house that Punjab Governor Khalid Maqbool and his wife had been included in a cultural troupe that visited New York in 2004. The governor’s military secretary Ahad Muzaffar Shah and ADC Muhammad Shafique were also with the governor. “Only two artists, Najam Shiraz and Mustafa Qureshi, were part of the troupe and Rs 1.613 million was spent on the visit,” he said.
The minister said that the ministry had sent 26 cultural troupes to various countries at a cost of Rs 35 million between September 2002 and December 2005. He said that majority of the members of all those troupes belonged to Punjab and Sindh.
MMA’s Ismail Buledi said that dance and music were against Islamic principles and such troupes must not be sent abroad. Senator Raza Muhammad Raza of the Pakhtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party objected to Buledi’s statement, saying that dance and music were integral parts of the Baloch and Pashtoon culture.
In a written reply to a question, Religious Affairs Minister Ijazul Haq told the house that the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) had recommended amendments to some 900 laws to Islamise them.
The minister was not present in the house and no discussion took place on the matter. The Senate was also informed that the Federal Shariat Court had also examined more than 2,000 federal and provincial laws and directed amendments to about 350 to bring them in line with the injunctions of Islam. Haq claimed that most of the decisions of the Federal Shariat Court had been implemented. However, he did not elaborate that on which laws the court’s decisions were implemented.
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