Thousands of people attended the funeral of slain qawwali singer Amjad Sabri [7] in Karachi on June 23, the day after he was shot dead in an attack claimed by a Pakistani Taliban faction. The 40-year-old Sabri, son of qawwali master Ghulam Farid Sabri [8], was heading to a TV station for a special Ramadan performance when two gunmen fired on his car. Qawwali [9] is the traditional devotional music of Pakistan's Sufis, who are considered heretical by the Taliban. The Sabri family are members of the Chishti Sufi [10] order. While the musical family has been revered since the Mughal empire, their tradition has come under growing attack in the increasingly conservative atmosphere of Pakistan. A blasphemy case was filed against Sabri last year after he mentioned members of the Prophet Muhammad's family in a song. The assassination was claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban [11]. There have been no arrests.
Journalist Amir Mateen [12] tweeted his dismay at a familiar "pattern" of events: "Politicians cry; public huffs & puffs; then back to normal until next tragedy. Shame." In 2010, the shrine for the Sufi saint Abdullah Shah Ghazi [13] was targeted in a terror attack in Karachi; that same year, a major Sufi shrine in Lahore [14] was targeted in a bombing that left 42 dead. Gunmen attacked a Sufi gathering in Karachi [15] in 2014. Sufi shrines and mosques have been repeatedly targeted [16] in the country's northwest. (BBC News [17], FirstPost [18], India, Dawn [19], Pakistan, Al Jazeera [20], June 23; BBC News [21], CNN [22], NYT [23], June 22)
