{"id":11887,"date":"2017-03-16T17:07:31","date_gmt":"2017-03-16T11:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/?p=11887"},"modified":"2017-03-16T17:46:31","modified_gmt":"2017-03-16T12:16:31","slug":"fake-fatwas-create-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/india-news\/fake-fatwas-create-trouble\/","title":{"rendered":"Fake fatwas create trouble"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<span style=\"color: #000000\"><em>Singer Nahid Afrin was in fact asked not to sing at a college function set to be held close to a mosque and graveyard as musical nights and dancing were deemed \u201cun-Islamic\u201d by 46 community elders in a leaflet they circulated in the state. It was the media which did not get its facts right<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\"><strong>By Sucheta Dasgupta<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">Welcome to yet another instance of misreporting by the media.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">On March 15, India\u2019s No. 1 newspaper, <em>The Times Of India<\/em>, reported on its front page, that Assamese reality TV star Nahid Afrin had been served a fatwa by 46 Muslim clerics asking her to stop performing in public following her singing songs against Islamic State terrorism. The story was titled \u201cFatwa against teen singer\u201d. In today\u2019s frantic industry atmosphere of copycat journalism, other media outlets, too, felt compelled to (mis)report the story. Some reports mentioned she was being targeted for a performance scheduled in a college in Assam\u2019s Lanka town that is close to a mosque and a graveyard.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">And that is how they got exposed\u2014for their neglect to verify the reports, lack of domain knowledge\u2014the reporter should have found out the meaning of the word, fatwa\u2014and their failure to do due diligence to a story.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">It so turns out that the purported fatwa is in fact naught but a leaflet circulated in some districts of the state. Its 46 signatories are office bearers of the Assam State Jamiat Ulama and teachers from various madrasas around the state.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">A fatwa is a legally non-binding ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognized authority issued by a qualified jurist or mufti. The leaflet in question wants the venue of a show in which Afrin is supposed to sing be shifted from Udali Sonai Bibi College as it is in the vicinity of a mosque and graveyard. It also states that musical nights are \u201canti-Sharia\u201d as is magic, drama, dance and theatre.\u00a0 \u201cIf we don\u2019t keep our children away from such things, Allah will not spare any of us,\u201d it reads, and that the proximity of the venue to the mosque would \u201cdefinitely anger Allah\u201d. The show is slated for March 25.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">Later in the day, <em>NDTV<\/em> issued an apology for reporting unverified news. <em>Scroll<\/em>, meanwhile, carried a report titled, \u201cThe \u2018fatwa\u2019 against Assam singer Nahid Afrin that never was\u201d. It quoted the secretary of the Assam State Jamiat Ulama, Maulvi Fazlul Karim Qasimi as saying that no fatwa had been issued in the case.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\"><em>TOI <\/em>meanwhile carried a follow-up story on March 16 in its inside pages\u2014\u201cAssam teen singer defies fatwa, says I\u2019m not afraid\u201d. Significantly, however, Afrin was under the impression that she had been issued a fatwa when she first learnt about the matter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">The 16-year-old Class X student, who lives in Biswanath Chariali, a town in northern Assam, got to know about the so-called fatwa, only when \u201ca few media people called up my father last night\u201d. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know what a fatwa means,\u201d she said. \u201cFor a few minutes, I thought I had done something wrong and I should give up singing,\u201d she told the media.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">However, she did find it in her to stand up against the albeit-less-official opinions of her community elders. \u201cI am speechless. I think my music is God&#8217;s gift to me. I will never bow down to it (such rulings and warnings) and never leave singing,\u201d she had said.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Singer Nahid Afrin was in fact asked not to sing at a college function set to be held close to a mosque and graveyard as musical nights and dancing were deemed \u201cun-Islamic\u201d by 46 community elders in a leaflet they circulated in the state. It was the media which did not get its facts right [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":11889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497,2046],"tags":[2653,2657,2651,2656],"yst_prominent_words":[],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Afrin2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11887"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=11887"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- html is corrupted -->