Minister gets fatwa for hug
By Bruce Loudon in Pakistan
Link
April 11, 2007 01:00am

Pakistan Tourism Minister hugged Frenchman in public
Clerics say she 'brought disgrace' to all Muslims
Family, friends fear for Minister's safety

ISLAMIC clerics have issued a fatwa against Pakistan's Tourism Minister after she was photographed hugging a Frenchman.

Clerics of Islamabad's Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, said Nilofar Bakhtiar had acted in an "obscene manner" and brought "disgrace" to Pakistan and all Muslims.

"She has committed a great sin," said the fatwa, issued on Sunday by two clerics at the mosque's department of edicts.

In the first such fatwa issued by a new shariah court set up at the mosque, the clerics demanded that she be sacked and punished and that her family "force her to ask for forgiveness".

Photographs appearing in Urdu-language newspapers showed Ms Bakhtiar hugging the Frenchman at a tourist resort in Normandy, France, after the pair jumped from an aircraft together.

"I hugged an over-aged man who is even older than my father," she said yesterday.

Ms Bakhtiar on Monday rejected the edict as "baseless", but said her family and friends were concerned for her safety.

She accused Pakistani newspapers of presenting "distorted" captions for the pictures after she had jumped without training. "It was just a pat because he felt so proud of me," she said. "I felt very happy also because it was affectionate and very encouraging."

Her France visit was attracting tourists to Pakistan and raising funds for victims of the 2005 earthquake that devastated the country, Ms Bakhtiar said. "What I did was right and patriotic. I fear no one but God."

The decree from the Red Mosque is the latest chapter in a Taliban-style anti-vice campaign launched by its hardline clerics in defiance of state authority in the relatively liberal Pakistani capital, despite President Pervez Musharraf's promotion of moderate Islam.

The three-page fatwa, issued under the seal of mufti Mohammed Younus, quoted the Koran and Hadidh (prophet Mohammed's sayings). "Islam does not allow such actions from a Muslim woman with a non-Muslim man," it said.

The fatwa was backed by major Islamic political parties, led by the right-wing Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, which filed a motion seeking action against Ms Bakhtiar.