Funny Pakistani Wedding

For France, burqa is a jail & an export

Paris: Fashion week in Paris, and after a display of pink and purple mini-dresses in an elegant apartment near the presidential palace, an assistant wheels out a rack bearing two very different creations: black abayas.
The billowing gowns, usually worn with a veil, have been made for the Saudi market by Paris-based couturier Adam Jones. As France considers banning full facial veils such as the niqab and the burqa, which President Nicolas Sarkozy has said “is not welcome here”, the fact that it is a major exporter of couture abayas may seem odd.
But that is just one of the many contradictions exposed by the latest clash between secularism and religion in the home of Europe’s largest Muslim community. “If someone tells me, ‘design an abaya,’ why not, I’m proud of that. It’s just a garment,” designer Stephane Rolland, who has made many abayas for Middle Eastern clients, said backstage after his fashion show in Paris.
When asked about the broader debate whether veils are a sign of subservience and should be outlawed, his confidence wavered. “I don’t want to speak about religion, that’s a different subject. But I don’t want to cover the woman—alas, I don’t want to think about that,” he said before turning away.
While French designers are wooing Saudi clients in airy showrooms, across town in the workingclass neighbourhood of Belleville the picture is very different. “If you wear the veil, you get insulted and attacked all the time, you get called a terrorist,” said Ikram Es-Salhi, 20-year-old student.
Es-Salhi wears a long brown veil that covers her head and body but leaves her face open. She would like to wear the full niqab, but it is banned at her college. She already switched from her preferred course of study, nursing, to sociology as nurses are not allowed to wear veils.
Many feminists not only in the West see the veil as an expression of a spreading ideology that wants to hide and silence women, undoing years of struggle for women’s rights.
However, mayors from various French cities have said more veiled women are turning up at wedding ceremonies or at schools to pick up their children, refusing to bare their faces even for identification.
Meanwhile, the powder blue Afghan burqa, a tent-like garment that covers women from top to toe, is in fact rare in Paris, and even the niqab is not often seen. At Zeina Pret-A-Porter, the shopkeeper says very few customers buy it.
From the outside, the full niqab presents an impenetrable black front. From the inside, the gauze allows a limited view of the world.
But even those who find the garment odious do not necessarily believe a ban on them is the best way to get rid of it. REUTERS

HIDDEN FACTS: As France mulls banning the niqab and the burqa, the fact that it is one of the biggest exporters of couture abayas may seem odd

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Afghan women attacked at protest against sex law

A group of some 1,000 Afghans swarmed a demonstration of 300 women protesting against a new conservative marriage law on Wednesday. The women were pelted with small stones as police struggled to keep the two groups apart.
The law, passed last month, says a husband can demand sex with his wife every four days unless she is ill or would be harmed by intercourse—a clause that critics say legalizes marital rape. It also regulates when and for what reasons a wife may leave her home alone.
Women activists scheduled a protest on Wednesday attended by mostly young women. But the group was swamped by counter-protesters—both men and women—who shouted down the women’s chants.
Some threw gravel and stones at the women, while others shouted “Death to the slaves of the Christians!” Female police held hands around the group to create a protective barrier.
The government said the Shia Muslim family law is being reviewed by the Justice Department and will not be implemented in its current form. Governments and rights groups across the world have condemned the legislation with President Obama calling it “abhorrent.”
Though the law would apply only to the country’s Shia Muslims— 10-20% of Afghanistan’s 30 million people — it has sparked an uproar by activists who say it marks a return to Taliban-style oppression. The Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001, required women to wear all-covering burqas and banned them from leaving home without a male relative.
Shia Muslim backers of the law say that foreigners are meddling in private Afghan affairs, and Wednesday’s demonstrations brought some of the emotions surrounding the debate over the law to the surface. AP

FIGHTING FOR RIGHTS: Women’s rights activists protest against a new law that legalizes marital rape in Kabul on Wednesday

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Khudaya Ve…

“Khudaya Ve, ishq hai kaisaa yeh ajeeb. Dil kay kareeb laaya dil ka naseeb vay”.

I was listening to this song and realized that I have never heard a song as mesmerizing as this one. It takes you to a different world all together. You might be sitting somewhere but within moments you feel yourself all around the world. That is the power of love. Love is such a strong emotion that sometimes I wonder why did not god save this wonder for the hereafter in heaven. Love should have been a reward for heaven for nothing can be as beautiful as it is. Can you recall all those moments when love sprout in your heart and nested its joy in your heart. It’s just a simple feeling yet it has the capacity to empower you and make you feel on the seventh sky. There could have been no better explanation for heaven but ‘love’. They say ‘it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all’. I support it entirely. It is the most magical and contenting feeling ever and has the magic of changing every single thing around you. The biggest blessing god put down onto this earth is ‘love’. Being in love and feeling in love was the most beautiful thing I ever experienced and no matter how much it hurt I would have done it all over again if history were to rewrite itself cause nothing can replace that single moment of sitting down with yourself and smiling for no apparent reason.

I always wanted to collect as many moments of joy I could in life and grab on to those little memories that I could cherish for the rest of my life but I also realized in time that sometimes these memories can become very painful. Love is a very strong emotion. It is so beautiful and such an empowering emotion. For people today love is nothing but a game. It is nothing but a word said out to anybody without realizing what they hold in their hearts. To me love is having that one person in your life who walks by your side through thick and thin and makes every moment of your life beautiful. Someone who you build a home with, someone who loves the people you love because he/she cares about you. Someone who holds those things close to his heart that are important to you for nothing in the world matters more to him but your happiness. Love is wanting to gaze in the eyes of this one person and for a fraction of a second experience heaven. Love is wanting to spend your life with him/her and growing old together. Love is snuggling up in bed holding each others hand watching TV each night. Love is sitting beside each other maybe not uttering a word and feeling that it was the best conversation you ever had. Love makes us strong and love makes us weak yet it is the most beautiful feeling you can ever experience on this earth. Knowing there is one person in this world who lives each day trying to make a home with you and painting beautiful memories on the walls of your home is love. Love does not happen in a moment but it takes a lifetime to build. Love is growing old with that one person you shared your life with. Love is watching your children grow up as you hold each other's hand in all your tuff times. Love is not in remaining at peace with each other all the time but it is in making peace after all the difficulties your relationship goes through. Love is not in these momentarily affairs people live in today. They defame love. Love is a commitment and is a promise of standing by the person you trust and respect the most. Love teaches you to be good and makes you humble. There is nothing more important in this world but our loved one's. Our parents, our siblings and the one we love make the true essence of our lives. Hence, its important to cherish them and realize they might not be there forever because the only thing we lie helpless in front of is death. Love someone only if you feel you will stand by it for the rest of your life. Love someone only if you really feel you will be able to keep them happy . Love someone only when you truly feel you want to build a home with them. Love someone only when you know that person holds as much love in her heart that she will fill your home with joys. Love someone who you want to spend your life with and not just make memories with. Love is a commitment and hence only fall in love when you know you have the power and faith to stick by it for the rest of your life.

Blessed are those who find true love in this life and are able to acquire it. Others like us survive on memories of ‘unrequited love’ and can only feel glimpses of heaven in those memories. I can truly feel the depth of the emotion when I say “Khudaya Ve, Ishq hai kaisaa yeh ajeeb”