Salman Ahmad was a member of the Pakistani rock band Junoon, until he moved to the US. In this video interview he tells about his experience of meeting with clerics in Pakistan and discussing with them whether it is true that music is prohibited according to Islam.
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This is an excerpt from an interview with Salman Ahmad which was conducted by Freemuse’s Kristina Funkeson in connection with the Freemuse conference on freedom of musical expression held in Beirut in October 2005.
In another excerpt Salman Ahmad tells about the videos he has produced, and about how and why Junoon was banned and received death threats in Pakistan in the late 1990s. This excerpt (below) is available in a short and a longer version:
The melody of Pashto music that has been in chains for the last five years has now found a way to bless the hearts of its lovers with a renewed zeal and life
This radio report tells about religious militants' attacks on music centres, and the reactions from the owners of the music business in Swat Valley of North-West Pakistan.
A complete ban on all singing and dancing has been implemented in Mingora city in northern Pakistan. The singers and dancers have been thrown out of business
Religious militants have blown up numerous music shops in the northwest region. On 9 October in Peshawar a bomb blast damaged almost all 40 shops in Hussain CD market
Dozens of local Taliban extremists attacked and ransacked a hotel in Mingora in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, because people were dancing and playing music there
Feature film about a musician who gets inspired by a cleric to give up music for religious reasons became Pakistan's highest grossing movie of all time
In June 2007 alone, there were more than 20 bomb attacks on music shops in north-west Pakistan. On 4 July, five more music shops were set ablaze with petrol
Two people were killed and several wounded by a bomb that exploded in a music download shop in Afghanistan's south-eastern town of Khost on 22 April 2007
