Pakistan's antidote to extremism: first arts school

Their music is an exotic mix of Delta blues and Indian classical ragas, a blend that Mr. Zaki encourages.

"We're doing classical Western on one side and Eastern classical on the other side, and sometimes we mix it up," says Zaki, who has had 150 applicants for his class thus far, but has accepted only 10. "My advanced students are already stars. So if we increase the level, and the word gets around, it's going to be great."

Students, most of whom come from middle- and lower-middle-class backgrounds, say they are thrilled to receive formal training. The hardest part is convincing their parents that they can make a living with their career choice.

But students are optimistic that they can convince their parents, and improve the image of arts in a country struggling to define what it means to be Islamic.

"There is a lot of ignorance in this country, so whatever the mullahs are preaching, it is taken as the law," says Sami Siddiqui, a guitarist. "I've studied my religion very deeply, and it's not what they are saying."

Creating a school for performing arts from scratch is a daunting task. NAPA's director of programs, Arshad Mahmud, pulls out a scene from Barrie Stavis's play "Lamp at Midnight," he has had translated into Urdu. It's a play about Gallileo's fight with the Roman Catholic church, a battle of faith and reason that resonates with many secular Pakistanis.

"We don't have enough texts, so we have taken up the task of translating classic plays ourselves to give to students," says Mr. Mahmud.

Fatima Ijaz and her classmates in the theater program say that the most important thing to notice is how many young women have entered NAPA. It wasn't so long ago that Pakistanis looked at acting or music as a disreputable profession, not so much because it was un-Islamic, but rather because it was akin to the saucy nauch dancing girls of the Moghul times.

"Most of the girls are feeling more comfortable expressing themselves here," says Miss Ijaz, a playwriting student. "Our parents are supportive, that is why we are here."

"Anyway most of us are social rebels, and we're determined to improve the state of the arts in Pakistan," says Mehreen Rafi, an acting student.

Salamat Ali Khan, a top Eastern classical singer, says Islam is not the problem. The problem is that society has held onto ancient prejudices.

"When the Aryans came to India, they divided society according to caste, and the musicians just happened to come from the lower castes," he says. "When musicians used to come to the cities, they would sound the drums to warn people."

Even so, he says, society has always taken its higher ideas from the performing arts. In addition, the arts provide a natural outlet for the normal frustrations of daily life. "Our traditional music has a soothing effect, rather than what you get in the West, which makes people hotter rather than settling them down," he says. "Our society could use a lot of soothing right now."

• Owais Tohid contributed to this report.

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