Who is winning?

When you ask if someone is winning, you immediately imply that someone else is losing. Winning means that there is a conflict underway, and we all know that we live amidst a long war. It is strange how long it took for us to actually accept that there was a war, even after thousands upon thousands of deaths. And then when we accepted there was a war, it was one we weren’t quite sure about, so then the terrorists had to murder hundreds of children to remind us of that reality. Then we launched an operation, made some changes, and thought that the worst was about over.

It is tempting then to position the recent murder of Amjad Sabri in the context of this war. His murder was quickly claimed by the TTP, and the MQM offered its own theories of why this could be a hit based on Sabri’s sympathies for them. Many looked at the rangers and the NAP for having failed; others looked at the local police and government.

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But there was something else that had been killing Amjad Sabri for longer — not the man perhaps, but the ideas that he gave shape to. One was the place of music and musicians in our society, and the second was the place of music in religion, and a society and state ostensibly governed according to religious dictates. The second idea is one that has long been attacked in the long war I spoke of above. Music and Islam is a decidedly subcontinental fusion, one central to the development of the faith here. Yet it doesn’t mesh well with Arab and Persian views of the religion, and so modern, or contemporary Muslims have long looked at it with disdain. Increasingly, music is seen or felt as incompatible with a Muslim identity.

And then there’s the place of music itself, religious or secular. Another facet of local, subcontinental identity was the caste system, and speaking broadly, musicians were always low on that social ladder, associated with immorality and excess. Even as we have urbanised and modernised, that image of musicians has persisted, and that construct gets reinforced by the anti-music religious sentiment.

Of course, despite all that music continues to survive, and in that sense, continues to win. But how pathetic is it that we live in a land where music has to fight a war at all?

The writer is a freelance journalist and director of content @patarimusic. He tweets @karachikhatmal