Srinagar, Sep 15: Srinagar Senior Citizens’ Forum has expressed serious concern over the harassment of Kashmiri traders and students by the police in different states, demanding immediate halt to it.
 The Forum, at a meeting held on Thursday at Khanyar in downtown city here with its president Muzamil Khan in chair, urged the government of Jammu and Kashmir for intervention to ensure immediate halt to the harassment of Kashmiris putting up in different states. 
 The meeting, which was among others attended by vice-president Khursheed Ahmad Khan and general secretary Nazir Ahmad Nazir, expressed profound grief and sorrow over the death of 22 persons in a road accident on Srinagar-Jammu Highway near Digdool.
 The meeting expressed solidarity with the families of deceased and prayed for speedy recover of those injured in the accident.
 Meanwhile, the Forum has expressed serious concern over the extravagant and wasteful expenditures on marriage celebrations in Valley, terming it a practice contrary to the Islamic teachings.
 “It is very unfortunate that while celebrating marriages we, despite being Muslims, are indulging in such practices as are not only alien to the marriages institutions we have inherited from the Islamic traditions but also against the basic teachings of Islam. These practices include playing music, singing bawdy songs, dancing, bursting crackers, lighting fireworks, decorating houses and long stretches of roads with fairy-lights, serving too many dishes at feasts and making vulgar show of wealth and riches by while entertaining bridge-groom and Bharatis,” said a spokesman of the Forum in a statement today, appealing to the political leaders and social personalities in general, and the Ulema and Imams and leaders of the religious organizations in particular to rise to the occasion and impress upon people to celebrate marriages in accordance with the Islamic traditions and desisting from indulging in un-Islamic practices during wedding celebrations. 

Lastupdate on : Thu, 15 Sep 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Thu, 15 Sep 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:00:00 IST