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AHMEDABAD, INDIA, February 13, 2001: Conservative Muslims of Ahmadabad and Surat, 580 miles southwest of New Delhi, are destroying their television sets because Muslim cleric Mufti Imtiaz said television was the cause of the country’s killer earthquake. “The mufti told us about the poisoning of minds through television, making Allah angry and causing the earthquake,” said Abdulbhai Guliwala, a shopkeeper in Ahmedabad. “I just carried out the order of the mufti,” he said. The idea has since raced through Muslim communities, spread in part by a recorded message from the cleric that was distributed throughout the state. In Panch Kuva, 22 Muslims brought out their televisions and destroyed them at the same time. Residents around two Ahmedabad mosques smashed their sets, and young men from the Baluchwad neighborhood destroyed televisions in public. Mufti Imtiaz’s office said he was traveling through the quake-hit Kutch region of Gujarat.

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