Pakistani TV smashes taboos with its answer to 'Glee'

Gay romance, Islamic extremism and a soundtrack of classic love songs make for Pakistan's taboo-breaking answer to the hugely successful US television series 'Glee'.
Like its smash hit forerunner, 'Taan' follows the lives and loves of a group of young people who regularly burst into song. But this time they attend a music academy in Lahore, instead of an American high school.........

Taan -- which is a musical note in Urdu -- tackles subjects considered off limits in Pakistan's deeply conservative Muslim society, with plotlines including love affairs between two men and between a Taliban extremist and a beautiful Christian girl.
The plan is for the 26-episode series to air in September or October, and while producer Nabeel Sarwar insisted the programme was not a “political pulpit”, he is determined to take on the tough issues.
“Nobody wants to have controversy for the sake of controversy, nobody wants to have an assignment to violence, nobody wants to push a button that would result in a disaster for anyone,” he told AFP.
“But the truth has to come out somewhere. Where are we going to put a line in the sand and say, 'Look, this is what we are'?”Taking a public stand to defend liberal values like this is rare in Pakistan, where forces of religious conservatism have risen steadily in recent years.
Risque scenes in foreign films are routinely cut by the authorities and the team behind Taan are acutely aware that they must tread carefully with their challenging material.
In one scene the two gay lovers dance and sing in a small room but never embrace -- their relationship is suggested rather than overtly shown. The moment is interrupted when a radical Islamist character bursts in.
Director Samar Raza said representing the lives of gay characters was difficult in a country where homosexuality is still illegal.
“Let's say in a certain scene, there are two boys talking to each other, they are not allowed to show their physical attachment to each other,” he said.
“So I bring a third character who says: 'God designed Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve'.”It is not only the sensibilities of the censors the producers must navigate.
While 70 percent of Pakistan's population is under 35, a huge and potentially lucrative audience for advertisers, it is the head of the household who decides what families watch on TV, explains Sarwar.
“The head of the household during the day is the matriarch and the head of the household at night is the patriarch -- they control access to TV,” he told AFP.
“You have to find programming that allows the matriarch and the patriarch to join in and participate, but there has to be room for the younger audience.”In a bid to appeal to older viewers the makers of Taan have licensed around 100 classic Pakistani songs, some by legendary artists such as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and have reworked them to suit modern tastes, as Glee does.
“We try to find music that resonates with the older generation which control the access to the TV but we contemporise that music so that the younger audience does not feel left out,” Sarwar said.
The show hopes that by taking on difficult issues in a light-hearted way it will both reflect the changing nature of Pakistani society and attract a young audience currently hooked on imported Turkish soap operas.
Local dramas struggle to compete with the likes of “Manahil and Khalil” and “Ishq-e-Mamnu” (Forbidden Love) -- Turkish serials starring Westernised characters with fair skin and dubbed into Urdu.
Turkish soaps are widely watched across the Muslim world, but the popularity of “Ishq-e-Mamnu” has prompted a lively debate about the “Turkish invasion” of the small screen in Pakistan, with local production companies complaining that they do not have the resources to rival them.
Yasmin Huq, one of the stars of Taan, told AFP a homegrown show could speak more clearly to Pakistanis than foreign imports.
“Today's generation is watching Turkish and Indian dramas,” she said. “But no one can make a musical story like Pakistanis. Even if you watch the Turkish and Indian dramas, you will see that nobody can talk about Pakistan like Pakistanis.”

Pakistan younger generation stresses the need of the ‘Sharia’ law

Pakistan younger generation calls the need for the ‘Sharia’ law as a democratic country
At a survey conducted in Pakistan the majority of the younger generation had disclosed that the country is not following the democratic methods in their overall activities In the meantime 40% believes that the ‘Sharia’ law has to be implemented which is more appropriate to the country.

It is learnt that 29% of the population believe that democratic principles have to follow in Pakistan. While 38%.believe that as a Muslim country governed the ‘Sharia’ law has to be implemented. If they need to benefit these the rights and privileges could be maintained. This would help to develop patients among the citizens is the stand they are at.
If these privileges are not given to the citizens, they cannot be made happy as they are waiting in  anticipation for what they need to have.

A Lady Ambassador of Pakistan insulted in America

Three years ago a lady Pakistani Ambassador in the United States had been insulted in a television programme. It is learnt that the Pakistan Police had started to probe and investigate in to this insult.
In the year 2010 she was Member of the Parliament.  A mother of five children had been sentenced to death. Against this death penalty she had filed action to withdraw the sentence which had made people in many religions to ponder.
It is learnt that via a television program she had insulted ‘Prophet Mohamed’. At that time itself she had been served with charge sheets and the police had conducted investigations as advised by the supreme courts.

She, sherry Raymond was an associate of the President of Pakistan Asif Ali Saldari had served as the ambassador of Pakistan in the United States in the year 2011. It is learnt that in the year 2010 she had made a defamatory statement. To insult ‘Prophet Mohamed’’ in Pakistan is an offence that would even be sentenced to death if proved

Bombings kill 115 in Pakistan

QUETTA, Pakistan -- A series of bombings killed 115 people in Pakistan yesterday, including 81 who died in a sectarian attack on a billiard hall in the southwest city of Quetta, officials said.
The blasts punctuated one of the deadliest days in recent years in Pakistan, where the government faces a bloody insurgency by Taliban militants in the northwest and Baluch militants in the southwest.

The billiard hall in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, was hit by twin blasts about 5 minutes apart last night. The hall was in an area dominated by Shia Muslims, a religious minority, and most of the 81 dead and more than 120 wounded were of the sect, police said.
Many of the people who rushed to the scene after the first blast, including police officers, rescue workers and journalists, were hit by the second bomb, which caused the roof to collapse, police said.
The sectarian militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for the attack. A spokesmen, Bakar Saddiq, said the first blast was carried out by a suicide bomber and the second was a bomb planted in a car and detonated remotely.
Radical Sunni groups often target the Shia minority, who they believe hold heretical views and are not true Muslims.
Earlier in the day, a bomb targeting paramilitary soldiers in a commercial area in Quetta killed 12 people and wounded 40 others, police said. The United Baluch Army, a separatist group, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Elsewhere in Pakistan, a bomb in a crowded Sunni mosque in the northwest city of Mingora killed 22 people and wounded more than 70, police said.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Car bombing leaves at least 19 dead, 25 injured in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – At least 19 people were killed by a car bomb in Pakistan on Sunday, the latest in a pattern of escalating attacks by militants in recent weeks.
An explosives-laden car was detonated next to a convoy of three buses carrying Shiite Muslim pilgrims from Pakistan’s western Baluchistan province to Iran. The blast also injured 25 people.

Officials said the attack apparently involved a remote-controlled bomb planted in a Toyota Corolla parked along the road that exploded just after a lead security vehicle that was guarding the convoy passed by. As soon as the first bus pulled alongside the car, the bomb detonated, all but destroying the vehicle.
The pilgrims had boarded in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, and were headed to Taftan, a border town in Iran. Shiites have often been the target of sectarian attacks by Sunni Muslim groups along this road, a main thoroughfare for pilgrims visiting religious sites in Iran.
“One security vehicle was leading the convoy while another one was behind it,” said Tufail Baloch, chief administrator in Mastung, where the attack took place. “The other two buses were partially damaged.”
Images on Pakistan’s Geo TV network showed the lead bus reduced to a charred, nearly unidentifiable jumble of metal, with the second and third badly damaged buses surrounded by ambulances tending to the injured.
Attacks on Shiites are on the rise in Pakistan, with more than 320 killed this year, according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch. The group says the Pakistani government appears largely indifferent to the killings, given its failure to catch or prosecute those carrying out the attacks.