Newsweek: CONSERVATIVE MUSLIMS ACCUSE THE MINORITY COMMUNITY OF CAUSING LAST MONTH’S EARTHQUAKE.
Conservative Muslims in Pakistan’s northwest are blaming the animist Kalash for a powerful earthquake that flattened entire villages in October, claiming their immoral ways provoked Allah’s wrath, in the latest attack on a diminishing tribe fighting to keep its identity alive.
Residents of Chitral district are still reeling from the 7.5 magnitude quake, which ripped through Afghanistan and Pakistan killing more than 390 people and leveling thousands of homes. It came just three months after floods also devastated Chitral, leaving thousands of families camping in the open as winter approaches.
Chitral’s verdant, plunging valleys have long attracted tourists for their natural beauty and their brush with legend as the home of the ancient, polytheistic Kalash. Pakistan’s smallest religious minority, they speak their own language and celebrate their gods through music, dance—and alcohol, which they brew themselves for rituals and consumption, but many Muslims in the region feel Allah, angered by such un-Islamic practices, has smote the region with natural disasters.
“People are saying that the earthquake came because of the Kalash,” says student Shira Bibi, who spoke to AFP in the village of Brun, nestled in the Bumburate area of the valleys. Her face is uncovered and her clothing, a deep black, is intricately embroidered across the shoulders, as is the wide belt slung across her waist. Her long, dark hair is braided beneath a beaded headpiece—in the traditional Kalash style.
Categories: Asia