ISLAMABAD, 10 April 2007 — The prayer leader of a mosque in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, has issued a decree calling on the government to sack a woman minister after a photograph was published showing her hugging a foreign man.
The demand, contained in a decree or a fatwa, is the latest challenge from the pro-Taleban mosque to the government of President Pervez Musharraf.
Pakistani newspapers carried a photograph last week showing Minister of Tourism Nilofar Bakhtiar hugging a man, apparently her para-jumping instructor, after completing a jump in France.
Newspapers said she did the para-jump to raise money for victims of an earthquake that killed 73,000 people in Pakistan in October 2005.
Abdul Aziz, imam at Islamabad’s Lal Masjid or Red Mosque, said yesterday she should be sacked.
“Her act was un-Islamic and against our social norms. She earned a bad name for Islam. She should be punished,” Aziz told Reuters.
In February, a fanatic shot dead a woman minister of the government of Punjab province because he thought women should not be in politics. The gunman was sentenced to death last month.
The behavior of the prayer leader and their thousands of stick-wielding followers — and the government’s failure to act against them — has dismayed many Pakistanis.
Last month, girl students from the mosque’s religious school abducted three women they accused of running a brothel as part of a private anti-vice drive.
They later detained two policemen. All of those detained were eventually released but the mosque leaders have vowed to press on with their campaign against “obscenity and un-Islamic activities.”
“It is a reaction to what Musharraf is doing, trying to enforce Western norms in our Muslim society,” said Aziz’s deputy and brother, Abdul Rashid Ghazi.
In the first high-level contact between the government and the mosque leaders, the chief of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, held talks with them at the mosque at the weekend.
Ghazi said Chaudhry Shujaat had come to seek their views. “We are struggling for a cause... We’ll not wind it up,” he said, referring to the vigilante court.
President Musharraf presided over an important meeting in Rawalpindi yesterday that discussed the judicial crisis triggered by the suspension of top court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and the standoff between the Red Mosque and the government. President Musharraf directed the Islamabad administration to resolve the mosque issue through talks.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Chaudhry Shujaat, heads of intelligence agencies and president’s aides attended the meeting.
Sources told Arab News the strike call given by lawyer associations for April 13 also figured at the meeting. Chaudhry Shujaat favors a peaceful settlement of the mosque crisis.
The rapidly changing scenario has spawned rumors of a political change in the country. Former Chief of Army Staff Gen. Aslam Beg was quoted by Daily Express newspaper as saying a change was imminent.
In another development, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court against Aziz and Ghazi of the Red Mosque for setting up the so-called Shariah court, issuing fatwas and trying to Talebanize the society.
The petitioner, Shahid Orakzai, a journalist, has asked the Supreme Court to direct the government not to allow any religious group or sect to establish any parallel institution that is in conflict with the institutions established under the constitution.
