On a Pakistan government website, it says: “2007 has been declared the ‘Year of Tourism’ by the Pakistan Government.” We wonder if Pakistan’s Minister of Tourism, Nilofar Bakhtiar, included the historically elite Red Mosque in the nation’s capital of Islamabad as a featured attraction — now that its clerics have issued a fatwa against her.
Pakistan’s tourism minister says she fears for her life after clerics at a radical mosque issued an edict accusing her of sinning by hugging her French parachute jumping instructor, the state news agency reported. Minister of Tourism Nilofar Bakhtiar told a parliamentary committee of her fear on Saturday following the Taliban-style edict against her by Islamic clerics at Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, in Islamabad, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.The clerics said the hug was “an illegitimate and forbidden act” and “without any doubt, she has committed a great sin.”
The photo that irked Maulana Abdul Aziz of Lal Masjid . “An illegitimate and forbidden act”
A “great sin” being committed by Nilofar Bakhtiar — video here
Two clerics at the mosque issued the edict against Bakhtiar last Sunday, demanding that she be sacked, her family punish her and she be made to ask for forgiveness after pictures in the Pakistani media showed Bakhtiar hugging her parachute jumping instructor at a fundraising jump in France…
The mosque’s chief cleric, Maulana Abdul Aziz, has threatened to stage suicide attacks if authorities try to raid the mosque. Bakhtiar rejected the edict last week, saying she had only received a pat from her instructor for her jump in France last month to raise money for victims of a devastating earthquake in Pakistan in 2005.
iqbal.latif@gmail.com
Posted by MACHIAVELLIAN AFFLATUS at 5:46 PM 0 comments