“You are Musalman. Don’t let Kafirs in your homes. They will rob you of your faith”

Pakistan: Pakistani Sufi singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan displaying his ‘Sufi love’ towards kafirs in his songs.

“You are Musalman, don’t let kafirs in your home; they will rob you of your faith…”So sang the famous Pakistani Sufi and Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, in one of his qawwalis. With these lines, he conveys that kafirs should not be allowed inside Muslim homes for the fear of turning the Muslim into hateful bigot and snatching away his Iman. He also softly targets the Hindus by asking his co-religionists to snatch away the dignity of the kafir Hindus.

Nusrat Sa’ab, respectfully called so in India, was loved by a majority of Hindu music patrons and he, too, accepts that it was only the Indian patronage which recognized his talent. He laments over the fact that Pakistan had an indifferent attitude towards music whereas India had built institutes to teach and learn music. But for him, the Hindus, with all their love and admiration for him, were always kafirs, only to be hated.

Claiming to have accompanied a Pir named Shaikh Darwesh and Mahmud of Ghazni to India, his forefathers settled in Jalander and learnt and adopted music as a profession here. The country and its civilization which gave his forefathers their daily bread and fame also became a target, as they passed their legacy of rabid kafir-hate and anti-Hindu compositions on to their descendants.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan delivered these hateful lyrics with such cavalier innocence, it reflects the systemic hatred of Hindus that is deeply embedded in the souls of Muslims in Pakistan.