Ladies from a hardline spiritual seminary within the Pakistani capital Islamabad kind army fashion rows in a counter protest towards an Worldwide Ladies’s Day march – held throughout the street. The seminary ladies accused the ladies’s day marchers of vulgarity for chanting the slogan “my physique, my alternative.”
Diaa Hadid/NPR
cover caption
toggle caption
Diaa Hadid/NPR
Ladies from a hardline spiritual seminary within the Pakistani capital Islamabad kind army fashion rows in a counter protest towards an Worldwide Ladies’s Day march – held throughout the street. The seminary ladies accused the ladies’s day marchers of vulgarity for chanting the slogan “my physique, my alternative.”
Diaa Hadid/NPR
Demonstrators belonging to Islamist teams attacked an Worldwide Ladies’s Day rally within the Pakistani capital Islamabad on Sunday, hurling rocks, chunks of mud and even their sneakers. The demonstrators, who had been at a rival rally held by hardline Islamist organizations, had been significantly enraged by one slogan the ladies’s day rally adopted: “mera jism, mera marzi” – “my physique, my alternative.”
Riot police arrange giant fabric barricades to dive the rival rallies, which flanked both facet of a major street. However the police had been additionally there to guard the ladies’s day protesters, after the hardline women and men threatened violence.
Because the protest was winding down, dozens of males tried to push by means of the barricade, together with a person who held just a little lady aloft on his shoulders. Based on a video uploaded to Twitter by a BBC reporter, police used batons to push them again. Nonetheless, for the following jiffy, they hurled projectiles that scattered the ladies’s day protesters, as journalists huddled behind concrete street dividers.
The hardline teams, their surrogates and conservative speaking heads, took to the airwaves previous the rally to sentence Pakistani feminists, accusing them of encouraging anti-Islamic vulgarity by elevating a slogan that hinted {that a} girl had the best to do as she happy.
The tensions even boiled over on a stay speak present, the place a display author swore at a outstanding Pakistani liberal after she interrupted him by chanting the slogan. “No person would even spit in your physique,” he shouted in a clip widely shared on social media.
A protester at an Worldwide Ladies’s Day rally within the pakistani capital islamabad holds aloft an indication that reads “my physique, my alternative.” Hardline Islamists held a counter rally throughout the street, largely angered by that slogan, which they mentioned was un-Islamic and vulgar. they accused the ladies’s day marchers of spreading a liberal, western agenda.
Diaa Hadid/NPR
cover caption
toggle caption
Diaa Hadid/NPR
A protester at an Worldwide Ladies’s Day rally within the pakistani capital islamabad holds aloft an indication that reads “my physique, my alternative.” Hardline Islamists held a counter rally throughout the street, largely angered by that slogan, which they mentioned was un-Islamic and vulgar. they accused the ladies’s day marchers of spreading a liberal, western agenda.
Diaa Hadid/NPR
Conservative attorneys petitioned the courts in Pakistan’s three cities to attempt ban the ladies’s marches. One outstanding Islamist opposition chief, generally known as Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, threatened protesters on Feb. 29, warning them to not chant “my physique, my alternative.” “God prepared, we may even come out into the streets, and we’ll destroy you,” he warned. And a senior trainer at Jamiat Hafsa, a hardline ladies’s seminary within the Pakistani capital, advised NPR her college students would halt the march by organizing a rival “modesty march.”
“It is a march to cease that march,” mentioned the girl, who makes use of the identify Bint Azwa (the ladies on the seminary typically use first names or faux names to keep away from being recognized by safety establishments that monitor their actions). “We aren’t going to let these ladies march the streets of our nation, our neighborhood, with these vulgar chants.”
The violence underscored how hardline Islamist teams performed upon conservative outrage over the slogan “my physique, my alternative,” to say their presence within the Pakistani capital – and show their muscle.
The opposition chief Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman has struggled to discover a toehold in Pakistan’s freewheeling politics since his social gathering was compelled into opposition. The hardline Jamiat Hafsa was violently shut down in 2007, after a standoff that killed greater than 100 individuals. The ladies returned to the seminary solely this February, and have dared safety forces to take away them once more.
On Sunday, dozens of the seminary ladies turned up on the counter-rally, clad in lengthy black robes, headscarves and face veils, segregated from dozens of males who stood in a close-by park. They stood in military-style rows, their fearsome look solely jarred by blue, inexperienced and pink bows pinned to their shoulders, to determine which bus they need to return on, defined one 25-year-old, who solely gave her first identify, Rubina.
“We do not need ladies to make decisions for his or her our bodies. The selection rests with God,” she mentioned. Nodding towards the ladies’s day march, she described the ladies there as “bare.” “These individuals do not even put on dupatas,” she exclaimed, referring to the scarf that Pakistani ladies historically drape throughout their chests to indicate modesty.
Ladies from a hardline spiritual seminary within the Pakistani capital Islamabad kind army fashion rows in a counter protest towards an Worldwide Ladies’s Day march – held throughout the street.
Diaa Hadid/NPR
cover caption
toggle caption
Diaa Hadid/NPR
Ladies from a hardline spiritual seminary within the Pakistani capital Islamabad kind army fashion rows in a counter protest towards an Worldwide Ladies’s Day march – held throughout the street.
Diaa Hadid/NPR
On the opposite facet, on the ladies’s march, tons of of males, ladies and transgender Pakistanis clustered. Some waved the purple flag of a leftist social gathering. Others held up indicators, together with “my physique, my alternative,” however they denounced so-called “honor” killings, the place males homicide their feminine kinfolk for bringing alleged disgrace onto the household. Some demanded to know the destiny of feminine political activists who mysteriously disappeared.
“Pakistan is getting increasingly divided over time,” mentioned Ambreen Gilani, a 41-year-old improvement advisor, gesturing to the Islamists throughout the street. The opposition to the ladies’s march helped inspire one other protester to show up, Sukaina Kazmi, a chemical engineer. She gestured to her Muslim scarf, “Our faith doesn’t train us any of the issues they’re standing up towards, our faith really does battle for girls’s rights,” she mentioned.
Because the protesters regrouped and walked away from the handfuls of males attempting to assault them, one organizer, Anam Rathor, mentioned the violence underscored why they had been demonstrating. “This proves our level, and this motion is rising. And now we may have extra individuals. The rationale why they’re throwing stones is as a result of they’re afraid of us and that makes us blissful.”
The post With Shoes And Stones, Islamists Disrupt Pakistan Rally : NPR appeared first on Down The Middle News.
source https://downthemiddlenews.com/with-shoes-and-stones-islamists-disrupt-pakistan-rally-npr/
No comments:
Post a Comment