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Ramadan 'police' target Pakistan's cafe society | World news | guardian.co.uk
With its wooden floors, leather sofas
and customers peering at their Apple
laptops as they sip their coffees, Mocca
Cafe is the not the den of iniquity that
might normally attract a police raid.
But Islamabad's police have suddenly
found cause to turn their attention to
the capital's poshest eateries in an
effort to enforce a patchily applied,
decades-old law forbidding people
from eating or drinking in public during the fasting month of Ramadan.
Customers and proprietors were
shocked on Saturday when, nearly
halfway through the holy month,
Mocca and at least two other popular
eating spots in the well-heeled Kohsar
market were visited by police officers cracking down on the illicit
consumption of muffins and brownies,
not to mention smoothies and skinny
lattes.
Members of what pass for Islamabad's
cafe society said they could not
remember anything like it. The
manager of Gloria Jeans, a nearby
restaurant, said he had never even
read the Ramadan law until the police arrived.
He has now placed a sign in
the restaurant saying it is only "open
to the communities not observing the
fast of Ramadan".
A message circulated on an expatriate
email list by a customer who had been
in the Gloria Jeans coffee shop at the
time reported a "large commotion". "
There was a lot of hostility in the air
because foreigners were being served
while others (Pakistanis) were being
told to leave," the email said, before
going on to advise expats to give
restaurants a wide berth until the end of Ramadan. "
Personally, I wouldn't take the
chance after the anger I felt while in
the coffee shop.
" The raids, which police say were
prompted by a complaint from a
member of the public, followed last
month's police assault of a journalist
who had the temerity to consume a
soft drink in his car at a secluded hilltop beauty spot overlooking
Islamabad.
He said he was beaten with belts by
the officers, who threatened to charge
him under the Ramadan Ordinance, a
law passed in 1981 by General Zia-ul-
Haq, the then military ruler who did
much to make Pakistani society more Islamic.
Prior to the law, which allows for
transgressors to be jailed almost on
the spot for up to three months,
restaurants simply covered their
windows to conceal diners from public
view.
The heavy-handed policing of eating
raises fears among some critics of a
rising tide of Islamic conservatism
within the state and society at large.
"This sort of behaviour is totally
unwarranted, and a sign of the
extremism that has infiltrated into the
police,"
said Raza Rumi, a newspaper
columnist. "We have this double standard where
the police take no action on the
important things but when it comes to
enforcing these Islamist positions they
are more efficient than ever," he said.
The police involved in last week's raids
say they were simply enforcing the
law. One senior officer, who did not
wish to be named, said he was actually
trying to discourage extremists. "Personally I have no problem with
people eating, but if the restaurants
and hotels in the less privileged parts
of the city are not serving food then it
gives us an image problem with
militants and religious people.
They say the common people abide by the
law, why don't you take action against
the posh areas?" The sensitivities of Pakistani liberals
are all the more acute in Kohsar
market.
The small collection of shops
and restaurants located between a
mosque and a children's play area was
the place where Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province, was
gunned down by one of his
government bodyguards in January
2011.
He was walking past Mocca Cafe when
his guard, furious at Taseer's public
defence of a Christian woman
sentenced to death under the
country's much-criticised blasphemy
laws for allegedly insulting Islam, shot him dead.
With its wooden floors, leather sofas
and customers peering at their Apple
laptops as they sip their coffees, Mocca
Cafe is the not the den of iniquity that
might normally attract a police raid.
But Islamabad's police have suddenly
found cause to turn their attention to
the capital's poshest eateries in an
effort to enforce a patchily applied,
decades-old law forbidding people
from eating or drinking in public during the fasting month of Ramadan.
Customers and proprietors were
shocked on Saturday when, nearly
halfway through the holy month,
Mocca and at least two other popular
eating spots in the well-heeled Kohsar
market were visited by police officers cracking down on the illicit
consumption of muffins and brownies,
not to mention smoothies and skinny
lattes.
Members of what pass for Islamabad's
cafe society said they could not
remember anything like it. The
manager of Gloria Jeans, a nearby
restaurant, said he had never even
read the Ramadan law until the police arrived.
He has now placed a sign in
the restaurant saying it is only "open
to the communities not observing the
fast of Ramadan".
A message circulated on an expatriate
email list by a customer who had been
in the Gloria Jeans coffee shop at the
time reported a "large commotion". "
There was a lot of hostility in the air
because foreigners were being served
while others (Pakistanis) were being
told to leave," the email said, before
going on to advise expats to give
restaurants a wide berth until the end of Ramadan. "
Personally, I wouldn't take the
chance after the anger I felt while in
the coffee shop.
" The raids, which police say were
prompted by a complaint from a
member of the public, followed last
month's police assault of a journalist
who had the temerity to consume a
soft drink in his car at a secluded hilltop beauty spot overlooking
Islamabad.
He said he was beaten with belts by
the officers, who threatened to charge
him under the Ramadan Ordinance, a
law passed in 1981 by General Zia-ul-
Haq, the then military ruler who did
much to make Pakistani society more Islamic.
Prior to the law, which allows for
transgressors to be jailed almost on
the spot for up to three months,
restaurants simply covered their
windows to conceal diners from public
view.
The heavy-handed policing of eating
raises fears among some critics of a
rising tide of Islamic conservatism
within the state and society at large.
"This sort of behaviour is totally
unwarranted, and a sign of the
extremism that has infiltrated into the
police,"
said Raza Rumi, a newspaper
columnist. "We have this double standard where
the police take no action on the
important things but when it comes to
enforcing these Islamist positions they
are more efficient than ever," he said.
The police involved in last week's raids
say they were simply enforcing the
law. One senior officer, who did not
wish to be named, said he was actually
trying to discourage extremists. "Personally I have no problem with
people eating, but if the restaurants
and hotels in the less privileged parts
of the city are not serving food then it
gives us an image problem with
militants and religious people.
They say the common people abide by the
law, why don't you take action against
the posh areas?" The sensitivities of Pakistani liberals
are all the more acute in Kohsar
market.
The small collection of shops
and restaurants located between a
mosque and a children's play area was
the place where Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province, was
gunned down by one of his
government bodyguards in January
2011.
He was walking past Mocca Cafe when
his guard, furious at Taseer's public
defence of a Christian woman
sentenced to death under the
country's much-criticised blasphemy
laws for allegedly insulting Islam, shot him dead.
