Navid Kermani’s question: You suffer, but why?

If God exists, why do good people suffer? Did Man create God or did God create Man? Can suffering eradicate, or strengthen faith? Questions like these were raised at the book launch session of The Terror of God: Attar, Job and the Metaphysical Revolt by Islamic scholar Navid Kermani, moderated by Samina Qureshi at the second day of the Karachi Literature Festival on Sunday.

Kermani was quick to point out that throughout history people had dealt with why God let people suffer by either justifying or negating His existence, but there were also those who quarrelled with Him. This, he said, was the central motive behind a lot of mystical literature in both Islam and Judaism.

Attar’s The Book of Suffering was the most radical way of questioning God on human suffering. Kermani pointed out that the “prophets and fools” in Attar’s book had expected God to act like a god, so they quarrelled with Him and believed in Him at the same time.

The session was quick to move into interaction with the audience after a brief introduction by the author. Most of the questions focused on the existence and qualities of God and each time Kermani was quick to point out that he was a scholar, and therefore his role was not to give solutions but to raise questions.

One of the attendees questioned Kermani on if it was Man who created God or the other way around. The author said that he was no one to say who created who and it was up to everyone else to find the solution themselves. Kermani said that by writing on human suffering and quarrelling with God, he had put his finger on a forgotten chapter of Islamic literature. He said that these were things that were no longer discussed and were a “forgotten motive.”

Cultures throughout history had been strongest when they were self-critical of themselves and questions were being raised. If you look at Islamic literature, critique, including that of God, can be found everywhere, but none of it can be found today. “I speak about Iran but this can also be translated to Pakistan,” he said.

Kermani said that there was no more questioning of authority today. Questioning made religions strong and if the questioning was internal, it would make it stronger. “The way of thinking today is not the way of Islamic tradition, which is much more open and complicated than it is portrayed today.”

This post originally appeared here.

Zardaris are a Baloch tribe, historian reminds, much to audience’s amusement

Walking into a session on Balochistan, one would expect a discussion and questions on human rights violations, separatist talk and where the government is going wrong. But the session titled ‘Songs of the Falcon: Balochistan’ at the second day of the Karachi Literature Festival on Sunday was anything but that. In fact, it was a talk on the cultural diversity and brief history of the province, and quite dull if summarised into one word.

Named after a short story by Russian author Maxim Gorky, the session was moderated by author and political commentator Dr Rasul Baksh Rais, who spent more than 15 minutes with the introduction and presenting the first question to the panel of Naheed Azfar, Zobaida Jalal and Yaqoob Bangash.

Jalal, who was the education minister during Pervez Musharraf’s tenure, focused more on personal accounts for her answers. Her answers therefore drew on the Makran region, where she comes from, and even when it came to discussing civil society, she chose to mention the construction of a school by her family and how Balochistan focused more on community-based organisation.

Naheed Azfar’s talk on the other hand was more focused on the cultural side of the province, differences in dress, jewellry and a personal account of Baloch hospitality, which left a section of the audience clapping and cheering. This obviously wasn’t very interesting for Bangash, who was seen yawning on stage during one of her answers.

As it turned out, Yaqoob Bangash was a lot more engaging and interesting than the other two panellists – he did exactly what he was good at: give a history lesson to the audience.  Perhaps if the organisers had chosen Bangash to moderate the session, it would have gone differently.

His ‘lesson’ focused more on the history of British Balochistan, the state of Kalat and Baloch tribes existing in both Balochistan and Sindh (mention of the Zardari tribe also being Baloch had Jalal smirking on stage).

Bangash said that it was important to understand the diversity of the province and engage with it, a creation of a state that can hold together. “The reason we don’t understand Balochistan is because we don’t understand what is going on there.”

He was quick to point out that the problem lay with not honouring the Baloch. “You have to engage and honour them, admit past mistakes and tell them that we want you to remain with Pakistan… they will get on board.” Thus, the Baloch will become a part of a national discourse if they are given the opportunity. Probably the most interesting part of the session was not Bangash’s history lesson, but an angry gentleman from the audience who pointed out that the historian was wrong in presenting the geographical history of the province and that the people who knew Balochistan were not being given their rights. The gentleman also directed his ‘mild rage’ towards Jalal, stating that language was a cultural expression of the province and she had not even given its people the right to learn in their mother tongue during her tenure.

This post originally appeared here.

HR Giger Revealed: Monster maker

It is very rare that a documentary packed with a bunch of goodies is overshadowed by the extras that come with it. That is exactly the case with HR Giger Revealed, a documentary on Swiss surrealist HR Giger, who is known for his work on Ridley Scott’s film Aliens and various music album covers, among other things.

The documentary tries to cover major aspects of Giger’s work, such as his sculptures, but fails to keep the viewer interested. If it were not for the short films such as Walking with Giger included in the DVD’s extras, the documentary would have been an hour-long snoozefest consisting mostly of fellow artists and musicians praising Giger.

The film revolves around rare footage of the artist at his work place and his work displayed in his own workshop and museum. The opening shows Giger walking in a graveyard in Prague talking about death and changes scenes to him working at his workshop. The scenes showing the artist at work could have been made more interesting – I’d like to see him really working, not sitting on a chair and spraying black paint on a finished sculpture. The documentary is shot in three different locations, Giger’s workshop in Zurich, the Giger Museum, and the Giger Bar in Gruyères, and the film is structured around the work displayed in these locations.

The museum segments are interesting, they walk you through each room and show off his major works. For someone who has not been to the Giger Museum and will never get a chance too, well, something is better than nothing.

The scenes of the Giger Bar in Château St Germain are beautiful. We also get to see the $30,000 Harkonnen Capo chair designed for the Dune film.

The interviews with artists, musicians and other people he has worked with could have been a little better. Most of the artists are all praise and don’t speak much beyond that. Thomas Gabriel Fischer (aka Tom Warrior), the former front man for Swiss band Celtic Frost appears twice on the DVD, once in the documentary and the second time on Home Made, he however does not talk about Satan I, Giger’s work that the band was allowed to use free of charge. Interesting stories are clearly missed as most of the time is spent on praise. Debbie Harry (of Blondie) is probably the only one on the documentary who keeps you interested when she talks about Giger’s artwork for her band’s album Koo Koo, and also footage of the two music videos directed by Giger for the album (“Backfired” and “Now I Know You Know”). A little more discussion on the Dead Kennedys Frankenchrist album cover, which used the work Landscape XX originally and drove the band’s front man Jello Biafra to bankruptcy after a trial, would have been nice.

The DVD’s highlights are Art in Motion and Walking with Giger. Art is a 30 minute short of Giger’s work animated, an even more horrifying imagery of already realistic works of art. It revolves around ten of his works, touching on Atomic Children, Triptych, his Dune imagery and the Erotomechanic series.

Walking with Giger is a four minute short directed by Jo Schuttwolf. Giger talks about his influences and his perception of life. Way better than the shots of him walking and cackling at random intervals on the main documentary.

Overall the set is a decent attempt at documenting Giger and some of his work. If you’re a fan, you’ve probably seen most of what is shown here, and probably know more stories than being told here. If you’re just discovering Giger, and his morbid world, you might want to check this out, it’s a great start.

This post originally appeared here.

‘The urban future of the planet lies in cities like Karachi and Douala’

What do you get when you compress the work of 50 artists from 17 globally Southern cities in one night? One story.

“It was amazing to see the similarity in conversations between the two regions. Issues ranging from movements, relationships, traffic jams – everything is the same,” said Kadiatou Diallo, one of the curators of the mega show Imag[in]ing Cities that threw its doors open to Karachi on Monday, albeit for one day only.

Indeed, that is what hit Diallo when she went over the images and sound files artist Amin Gulgee sent to the Space for Pan-African Research, Creation and Knowledge (Sparck). Diallo founded this initiative in 2007 with Dominique Malaquais, who Gulgee knew from Yale University.

Malaquais believes that the urban future of the planet does not lie in cities such as Paris or London, but it is in the east, in cities like Karachi, Lahore and Douala in Cameroon. This is where the future of urban humanity is being formed.

Thus was born the idea of holding a series of conversations that gathered works of artists from Karachi to Cairo, Kinshasa to Algiers and Cape Town to Luanda. Diallo, Malaquais and Gulgee were painfully aware of the incorrect representation of countries such as Pakistan, China and those on the African continent. “Sparck is helping to shatter the misconceptions people in the west have about these places,” she said.

Sparck and the Amin Gulgee Gallery are only exhibiting in Karachi but there are plans to expand to Lahore and Islamabad.

Malaquais said that the show was dedicated to Goddy Laye whose work The Beautiful Beast was on display. The 45-year-old artist died of malaria on February 20, just a day before the opening of the show. “Goddy created the most important site for the study and creation of art in Africa, The Art Bakery,” explained Malaquais.

The current show is the second in a series of three conversations across Asia and Africa. The first one, which was held in China, featured the work of Goddy Laye and Bill Kouelany.

“He spent a month creating the most extraordinary video installations, the work is now shown in the back of taxis all over the world and has been displayed at art shows across the world, including Art Basel,” said Malaquais.

The third and final conversation will take Stacy Hardy, a South Africa-based artist to Dubai. “It is important for things to happen in Karachi,” remarked Gulgee. “Change is going to happen here, not in London.”

This post originally appeared here.

School first, fish later: Little fishermen now getting an education

PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN

You know something is afoot when a madrassa shuts its morning shift to allow its students to attend the new school that has opened in the neighbourhood. But this is exactly what Qari Ahmed Raza did to make way for the Dawood Usman Goth Primary School in Rehri Goth, Bin Qasim Town.

“Most people in the area believed Nazrah and Islamiat was enough for their children,” he says. “I shut down the morning shift because I believe students should be educated so that they can excel in life.”

And while the foundation that funds the madrassa stopped its support, Qari Raza feels he has done the right thing. He’s noticed that the children are more polite now and want to dress up properly.

The school has been adopted by the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) and Indus Resource Centre (IRC) who fixed up its skeletal frame and opened it six months ago. According to PPAF education project manager Bilal Hasan, they received an overwhelming response. The sheer number of Montessori enrollments indicates that parents are making the right choice.

“The school was not functional ever since it was set up in 1992,” he says. “There was only one room and the teacher who was posted here would be absent most of the time.” According to its records, only 40 children had enrolled and none of them had progressed beyond the fifth grade.

Amir, along with 173 other poor children, can now march to school every day in Rehri Goth, a small fishing village, where boys are expected to set out to sea with their fathers at a young age.

Principal Abida Mehmood says the residents were so encouraging that she started a remedial class for girls who have missed out on their primary education. Thirty-six girls are enrolled in the six-month programme today. “Getting the older boys to come is difficult,” she says, though. “Most of them start going out to sea during the fishing season and lose interest in their studies at an early age.” It is either school or earning up to Rs1,000 a day catching crabs.

Tasneem, who has three children studying at Dawood Usman, says she is happy with the opportunity. Her husband has also been telling their daughter to keep it up and they even hope she can pursue higher studies as well.

The school has not just tackled education, teachers have been tackling the children’s gutka addiction.

Even the Montessori students found it difficult to quit. But one summer camp, the school roped in students and parents to warn them about its dangers and now they keep a check on all students.

The project has gone so well that the IRC has acquired another ghost school right across Dawood Usman and is planning to open a secondary campus by April. Remedial classes for boys will be housed in the building for seniors then. Space is an issue for now as Dawood Usman’s second, third and fifth classes all sit together in one room. Irfan Ali who teaches all three, says a lack of space has forced the administration to cram the students together in one room. He divides the blackboard into three parts and teaches each grade individually. There is currently no fourth grade, however. None of the students qualified for it when they took the admissions test.

For now the syllabus consists of English, Sindhi, Urdu, General Knowledge and Math but the teachers and administration hope to open a college section soon.

And if the drop-out rate stays low, its is likely the students of today will be taking college Mathematics tomorrow.

This post originally appeared here.

A new page: Kitabain, a click away

Gone are the days when one would have to visit book bazaars or weekly markets to search for that one book that no store was stocking up on, or books that were way too expensive for the average book reader. This is the promise of a new online service, Kitabain(kitabain.com), a site which offers visitors a used books home-delivery service.

The site was founded in April 2010 by Usman Siddiqui and Jawad Yousuf, who are also owners of The Readers Club, an online library where you can borrow, read and return books at your own convenience.

“We didn’t start The Readers Club and Kitabain with the intention of making money, and they are not our core businesses” says Siddiqui. According to the young entrepreneur, after they started The Readers Club, a number of members approached them for purchasing books, at which point Kitabain was conceived. Siddiqui and Yousuf then approached a number of booksellers and other contacts they had built when they had started The Readers Club. “I was surprised to see the number of books that were out there and not reaching the readers. Most wholesale sellers don’t hold much value and sell books by the kilogram or by the cover” he says. Through Kitabain, major sellers set up computers and got internet access so that they could catalogue and sell their books via the website, including one book seller who was a major source of books when the business started.

Kitbain currently offers a large collection of used and new books, ranging from world history, the occult, fashion and fiction. Kitabain currently has over 28,000 books listed on the site, with more being added daily. In an innovative twist, the site works two ways: users can log in and buy books or they can list books they wish to sell on the website and let the Kitabain team handle the pick-up and delivery between buyer and seller.

The online process is fairly simple. Users must create an account to browse through the categories and select books to add to their shopping carts, confirm the order and check out. A rider from Kitabain picks up the selected books from the seller and delivers it to the buyer. Deliveries are normally made within 24 hours of ordering, however, Siddiqui says “sometimes the seller is not available, so it takes time to arrange a pick-up. But we do try to make a prompt delivery.”

Payment is also fairly easy, as cash is collected from the customer when the delivery is made, but this option is currently limited to Karachi. For people who want to sell their books, there is a simple online process of entering the ISBN number of the book, after which the system will automatically pick up the cover and book information.

Usman says both websites have grown via word of mouth and social networks, and they have yet to get into targeted marketing for Kitabain, while The Readers Club has been advertised in some local papers. The two also plan on marketing Kitabain to schools and universities, as their catalogue offers a wide selection of text books.

Siddiqui says he is very happy with the way Kitabain has grown, citing major changes with the increasing number of customers, which has helped him and Yousuf to shift their attention on expansion plans for both sites.

This post originally appeared here.

The (political) party’s online

With the advancement of technology and the increasing power of social networking sites, political parties in Pakistan have begun to take baby steps in making their presence felt online.

The goal of such web politicking is to engage with an estimated 20 million local internet users (a potential vote bank of well-educated, young Pakistanis) as well as to establish the image of the party and provide a touch point for those seeking information. Unfortunately, according to research conducted by The Express Tribune, despite the Pakistani penchant for politics, the web presence of political parties have yet to attain any of the above.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf

Official website: insaf.pk

PTI has an average of 140,678 monthly visitors, with 506,438 monthly page views. Its traffic is mainly drawn from Pakistan followed by the United Kingdom and the United States.

The PTI website has an up-to-date articles and press release section, but what really attracts the large number of users are its forums. The forums give users a place to talk about trending topics and various issues, with a total number of 39,783 registered users. The PTI website also features a blog section, where office bearers write about current issues and the party. The website also has a paid user section for added content. PTI also has a decent Facebook following with 13,255 people on its official fan page.

Top tweeter @Imrankhanpti Followers 25,109

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz

Official website: pmln.org.pk

The N version of the Muslim League has the most basic website around. It features news reports, press releases, a photo section, leadership list and the party manifesto. It lacks videos, and engaging content, which explains why the site only draws in an average of 98 users per day, with 45 per cent of visitors only viewing one page on every visit. The most annoying design feature of the website is the fact that every hotlink opens a new window or tab. The party presence on social networking sites is minimal.

Top tweeter @CMShahbaz Followers 2,733

All Pakistan Muslim League

Official website: pasdar-e-pakistan.org

While PTI has managed to draw users to its website, Pervez Mushaaraf has managed to do the same without the need for a website. The official website of Pasdar-e-Pakistan (pre-APML) hardly manages to draw 25 users every day, but the Musharraf fan page on Facebook has over 300,000 fans, with an average of 500 to 600 comments and over 1,000 likes on every status update or pictures put up.

Now Musharraf has gotten the art of social networking figured out, he interacts with his fans, infact he even launched his political party on the basis of 300,000 people who want him back. Considering the fact that there are 2,460,480 Facebook users, that is fairly impressive.

Now Musharraf uses a solid strategy of interacting with his. He is always updating his status with past achievements, putting up memorable pictures and one of the best features he has is where fans can ask questions and they are answered via a video.

Top tweeter @PMPakistan Followers 5,214

Muttahida Qaumi Movement

Official website: mqm.org

The MQM has a strong online following which can be seen across multiple official and unofficial Facebook pages and groups and on the website which does moderately well. The site averages around 631 users per day, with 79 per cent of the users coming from Pakistan. The site is heavily reliant on text, video and pictures that promote the party and its leadership. Some sections of the site are multilingual, catering to a wider local audience. In terms of rich content, the site features addresses by party leaders, party songs, letters to activists, poetry, polls and a ‘Study Circle’ section. The site updates frequently with videos, news and interviews.

Top tweeter @Mayorkamal Followers 1,090

Pakistan Peoples Party

Official website: ppp.org.pk

The PPP website ranks abysmally low in terms of traffic. With an average of 3,000 users every month, the party is clearly not interested in engaging users. The website is subpar, with a basic leadership section, office bearers, party history and so on. Nothing that would make you want to go back and visit the website. The audio and video section (with some broken links) is probably the only attractive feature on the site. The PPP does not have a very significant official or unofficial presence on social networking websites.

Top tweeter @SalmaanTaseer Followers 3,875

This post originally appeared here.

The science (fiction) of tracking target killers

Somewhere in a dark alley a phone call is made and five minutes later two men on a motorcycle execute their deadly mission – an innocent bystander or specified target is gunned down.

As the killers make their way through the city, a police team begins to receive visuals of the escape route in a darkened room full of monitors and computers.

They use satellite imaging to zoom in on the suspects, make the necessary calls, and the miscreants are tracked down to their lair. This is the kind of scenario an ordinary citizen imagined when Interior Minister Rehman Malik declared that the government had hired the services of experts on using satellite imaging to curb target killings in Karachi.

On-ground reality

Satellite imaging has been used across the globe to highlight aspects of an ongoing war or for damage assessment in natural calamities. Most recently, the government has begun to use Google Earth to determine the growth of illegal encroachments in Karachi by comparing and contrasting the growth of housing in a location over a number of years.

Satellite imaging has also been used in war zones or conflict areas to ascertain damage, such as the destruction and disappearance of entire villages in Darfur.

More ambitiously, the United States has used satellite imaging along the border with Mexico to control drug trafficking by monitoring the movement of traffickers along the empty border space where the slightest activity triggers sensors and lets authorities know illegal crossings are taking place. However, an anti-terrorism expert contacted by The Express Tribune said using satellite imaging to tackle target killings in an overpopulated, overcrowded city is a fantasy.

“This is not a Hollywood movie where you can just zoom in on criminal activity. Besides the technological challenges involved in such an undertaking and such a setup would require massive budgets… there are far more feasible technological devices available.”

Realistic options

Currently, CCTV cameras are one of the most efficient surveillance devices available. High quality cameras with the right software and placed at strategic points can be used to identify culprits, and could serve to drive wary target killers off the main roads. According to a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity, Karachi currently has CCTV cameras controlled from three departments, the City District Government Karachi (CDGK), Traffic Police and the Sindh IT department. Unfortunately none of these cameras are efficient enough to be used for such a task, and none of the departments have CCTV cameras installed in the sensitive areas of Karachi, such as Orangi town and Liaquatabad.

The police confirmed that there are plenty of options available to the government, but more importantly, the devices already available are not being utilised properly.

He said that most departments do not have easy access to existing technologies like mobile phone tracking, and such facilities are going down the drain. “Jumping into new technologies would clearly be a waste of money and resources.”

Satellite imaging is an option which would serve better in identifying illegal activity on a macro level, rather than pinpointing individuals, while wiretapping is a controversial option which the authorities can use to identify individuals and track them down.

A newer technology that has been proposed and is widely used across the United States is the ‘ShotSpotter’. The ShotSpotter lays out a network of sensors in an area and is used to detect loud sounds. Once a sound has been detected the computer identifies the type of sound, the area where it occurred and sends a signal to a dispatch team which visits the location.

Not only does the system identify sounds, it keeps a record of the event for help with trials if a culprit is caught. The system is successful to the point that it caused a drop of 40 percent in homicide cases in Los Angeles during the last three years.

Unfortunately, this system is quite costly and security officials highlight a key problem being the issue of aerial firing at celebrations rendering such a system ineffective. For the moment, it seems scientific dreams of preventing criminal activities in urban settings with the use of high-fangled devices has a very limited scope.

This post originally appeared here.

Before you say ‘qubool hai’

(with Salman Siddiqui and Nehel Khanani)

When five-year-old Affifa goes to school she carries more than the burden of books on her shoulders. “My daughter was diagnosed with Thalassaemia, a blood disorder, at the age of three,” says Wajahat Ayaz, who works as an engineer at a leading power company in Karachi.

Affifa’s problems are compounded not only by the fact that her body generates an abnormal form of haemoglobin cells, but also by her rare blood group, known as the Bombay blood type. According to Dr Saqib H Ansari, chief of the Thalassaemia programme at the National Institute of Blood Diseases, there are only seven known donors in the country who share this blood group. “Patients like Affifa survive on blood transfusions, but it becomes a huge problem when one has a rare blood group because one can’t find matching donors,” Ansari says.

However, the little girl is lucky for now. Nuzhat, a woman of 40, is providing crucial life support for Affifa. “I will donate my blood to her as long as I live,” says Nuzhat. But what will happen after that?

Ayaz, who earns around Rs30,000 a month and spends close to Rs10,000 of that on monthly treatments for his daughter, says he can only pray that a miracle like Nuzhat will be around. However, that’s not the issue which torments him each day.

“If only I knew that we, the parents, would be the cause of her illness,” laments Ayaz, without saying anything about what he would have done had he known this fact beforehand.

Thalassaemia is a genetic blood disorder which a child inherits from their parents. “If both parents are Thalassaemia minor — that is, they carry the disease but it is not active in their system — there is a 25 per cent chance that their child will be a Thalassaemia major — an active patient –a 50 per cent chance that she will be a Thalassaemia minor and a 25 per cent chance that everything will be normal,” says Ayesha Mehmood, the spokesperson for the Fight Against Thalassaemia (FAiTh). Also, if a Thalassaemia minor’s partner is normal, their children, in all likelihood, will be born free of the disorder.

initiatives

Ayaz supports recent initiatives taken in certain provincial assemblies regarding the nikahnama law that advocates testing for blood disorders like Thalassaemia, Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS in couples before they marry. He suggests the government should make it mandatory to mention blood types on national identity cards so that potential donors can be identified.

But so far the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial assembly is the only legislative body which has passed a bill making it mandatory for couples to carry out Thalassaemia and Hepatitis C tests before the marriage takes place. The law does not ban couples from getting married if they find out they are both, for example, Thalassaemia minor carriers, but it gives them the advantage of knowing what they’re getting into. Meanwhile, the Sindh Assembly has to date only passed a resolution urging the federal government to consider making such tests compulsory.

On July 08, 2010, the Punjab government’s Local Government and Community Development Department proposed eight amendments to the nikahnama law; these included complete medical check-up reports prior to marriage. However, the amendments were criticised because of the caveat that the nikahnama document must also be signed by the parents of the consenting adults and were consequently withdrawn.

Member of the National Assembly Sherry Rehman has strongly criticised the Punjab government’s move. Rehman fears the measure might increase the number of forced marriages in the country. “Having parents sign the nikahnama would have meant the return of the wali system for women. The Lahore High Court has a ruling against it,” she says. She added, however, that she was all for testing couples for disorders before marriage and would strongly advocate such a bill.

Meanwhile, Masood Alam, who is about to get married this year, voices another concern. He says that even if blood testing before marriage becomes federal law, it would be hard to convince families that it is a healthy measure. “I and my fiancée may agree, but our families might not want us to get tested because of social pressure and superstition,” Alam says.

Even Nuzhat, Affifa’s donor, says that girls in Pakistan already face a lot of problems getting married and the proposed changes to the nikahnama law may become an added hurdle.

Dr Ansari proposes a solution. “We can follow the Iran model, where the man is asked to get tested first,” he says, adding that the woman only need be tested if the man is found to be suffering from, for example, Thalassaemia minor.

Also, families can be convinced about the benefits of testing with a little persuasion, says Shahzad Shah, who married in 2009 and got himself and his fiancée tested before marriage. “After we told our families about the advantages, they themselves took us to get our blood tests done,” Shah says. He adds that today he is a proud father and his daughter has no genetic blood disorder.

Religious scholars say that while conducting blood tests is not a necessity before marriage, according to Shariah law there is no harm in doing so. Darul Uloom Karachi’s Mufti Asghar Rabbani and Jafferia Alliance’s Maulana Sheikh Hasan Salahuddin say tests can help identify problems that an unborn child might face, because in the end, the child has to suffer the consequences.

This post originally appeared here.