Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) MPA Dr Zakir Shah has started an anti-obscenity and vulgarity campaign through his “Amar Bil Maroof Wanahi Anil-Munkar”, (vice and virtue department), organisation after the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal-led NWFP government failed to implement his bill unanimously passed by the NWFP Assembly in October 2002. Flanked by clerics and people of his constituency at a press conference, Dr Shah asked cinemas houses, music centres and cable operators to close their business during Ramazan voluntarily or his organisation would take “extreme steps” to do the same itself. He did not elaborate on the “extreme steps” his organisation would take.
Dr Shah asked the provincial and the federal governments to cooperate with his organisation in checking the spread of obscene posters, CDs, films and channels during Ramazan. “I have stopped cable channels, CDs and video shops and video games in my home town, Yousafabad Colony,” he said, adding that he had written to NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani, Chief Secretary Ejaz Qureshi and IG Police Mohammad Raffat Pasha to call an emergency meeting and direct cinema owners, cable operators and CD shops to close in Ramazan.