Islam fundamentalists burn TV sets, “a satanic invention of the West”

Activists of the Islamic Jirgah fundamentalist faction have burned televisions and VCRs in public for a third time in five months in the town of Mardan, north-west Pakistan. They hold that television is a satanic invention of the West, undermining the fundamentals of Islam. News, a local daily, reports the religious fanatics are determined to continue their jihad against TV, which they believe is detrimental for the moral foundations of Muslim families. Local mosques have become the fundamentalists' prime venues, where volunteer groups spread from out into neighbouring blocks. They are trying to persuade locals to give up watching TV programmes and destroy the "devil boxes", RIA Novosti announces. However, Pakistan's Chief Executive Officer Pervez Musharraf told a rally held during a Punjab popular festival, Basant, in Lahore that his country is a modern, progressive, and religiously tolerant nation. He qualified the claims made by some politicians and media that it is allegedly extremist as false stereotypes and distortion of the facts.