Pakistani Sufi singer shot dead in Karachi

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/22/pakistani-sufi-singer-shot-dead-in-karachi

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One of Pakistan’s top musicians, famous for devotional songs from a centuries-old tradition, has been shot dead by suspected Islamist extremists in Karachi.

Amjad Sabri, 45, was fired on by two men on a motorbike, as he drove through a congested area of the port city on Wednesday, Allah Dino Khawaja, the regional police chief, told Reuters. A relative travelling with the musician was injured but survived the attack.

The attack happened a day after a homeopathic doctor from the Ahmadi minority was killed in the same city, and two days after masked men seized the son of a top provincial judge.

The murder prompted an outpouring of grief across Pakistan and around the world for a man hailed as one of the best performers of Qawwalis, or devotional songs steeped in mysticism. The Sufi songs are a key part of the spiritual life of millions of Muslims across south Asia and enjoyed by wider audiences of many faiths.

No one has taken responsibility for the killing but police described it as terrorism. “It was a targeted killing and an act of terrorism,” Muqaddas Haider, a senior officer told the AFP.

The human rights activist Ali Dayan Hasan said the attack on a popular singer from a famous and well-loved musical dynasty was likely the work of Islamists. “Nobody has anything to gain, any statement to make by killing a Qawwal, except these people,” Dayan said.

Sabri, the son of another famous Qawwali singer, Ghulam Farid Sabri, who died in 1994, was a fixture on national television and regularly performed on a morning show during Ramadan.

Qawwals have long been criticised by the Taliban and other hardline groups that reject all music as un-Islamic, and particularly object to those songs which focus on the life of the prophet Muhammad.

There have been several targeted killings, in recent years in Karachi, which is the economic heart of Pakistan and home to 20 million people, but is a city increasingly plagued by political, ethnic and sectarian violence.

Last April, the activist and cultural leader Sabeen Mahmud was shot and killed. In May, Khurram Zaki, a rights activist and prominent critic of radical Islamists, was also gunned down in Karachi.