All of a sudden, the group transmuted into hip-hop music dancers. The Jaye Lo video had backup singers dressed as Muslim faithful , in white flowing apparel and cap. Davido had misrepresented Islam as the preoccupation of sybarites, they alleged. A Muslim group even set his posters ablaze as a representation of their anger. For his temerity at sharing his musical video, Jaye lo on his social media handles, the penalty was a quaint colouring of the social media with hate against his person and music. Popular American-Nigerian singer, David Adeleke, last week had a brush with his own Pakistani fanatics as he courted the intolerance of Muslim youths. As he wrote in his biography, Rock and Roll Jihad, it became a life struggle for him to get music positioned as an integral and crucial part of Islam. Upon his death, Ahmad became a celebrated rock star and his songs, a representation of a progressive Pakistan. To Islamists, Zia -ul-Haq got praises for his “de-secularization efforts and stern opposition to Western culture.” To the world out there however, Zia-ul-Haq was authoritarian, especially in his press censorship, religious intolerance and weakening of Pakistani democracy. Under threats from the military regime of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, Ahmad went underground. He then began to combine classic rock and blues, mixing them with the mystical music and poetry of Islamic Sufism, to form a blend of what he called “Sufi rock”. Not satisfied with himself, Ahmad made a momentary return to the “prompting of the Devil” on a cricket tour of Bangladesh. He got it to the highest octave, even playing alongside Imran Khan, Pakistani cricket World Cup player. As if leaving frying pan for fire, Ahmad recoiled off music to his other passion of playing cricket. The fanatic could not understand Ahmad’s temerity of playing rock music or music in general which Arabs potentates of the Islamic religion once referred to as “a prompting of the Devil” and an affront on Islam. As he sang, a Pakistani fanatic dashed to the stage, snatched Ahmad’s Gibson Les Paul guitar from around his neck and smashed it into smithereens. When Pakistani medical student, Salman Ahmad, stood up to twiddle his guitar, to the delight of all, at a student talent show event in a Lahore hotel in 1980, he was oblivious of the raging silent war between religion, music and sports.
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