Tara Sattar

Amjad Sabri, a famous sufi singer was gunned down by Taliban in Karachi, Pakistan.
The man has been singing praises of the holy Prophet Muhammad for several years. But he was executed after being blamed that he was blaspheming the Prophet; that too during Ramadan. In South Asia, home to an surprising one-third of the world’s Muslims, preachers and poets poised verse that lived on for centuries, inserting Semitic values into local languages, a mix that was as intoxicating as it was unique. Qawwali is the soundtrack of that tradition.
The poetry, often Urdu or Punjabi, is set to music, usually in paying tribute to of God or the prophet Muhammad. A band of singers joins together to convey songs that gleefully transmit the deep love of God, which classical Muslims articulated in secular metaphor: an intoxicating beloved, or an intoxicant itself.This was the music that connected generations of Muslims that gave a shared religious language. This was his music. And this he was taken from.