The Pakistani Tourism Minister resigned yesterday after hardline Islamic clerics accused her of obscenity for hugging her instructor after a charity parachute jump.

Nilofer Bakhtiar was photographed in brightly coloured jumpsuit and hugging her instructor after a tandem jump to raise money for child victims of the earthquake that struck Pakistan in October 2005.

The images provoked the wrath of clerics in Islamabad, who accused Ms Bakhtiar of posing in an obscene manner and violating the Islamic moral norms.

A religious court set up by the clerics at a radical mosque in Islamabad issued a fatwa, or religious edict, against Ms Bakhtiar when the photographs appeared in local newspapers last month. They urged the Government to punish her and dismiss her from the Cabinet. Ms Bakhtiar failed to win the support of Cabinet colleagues and the Government appeared to cave in to the demands of the militants.

As she announced her intention to resign yesterday, Ms Bakhtiar complained of a campaign of intimidation against her. This month she was sacked as head of the women’s wing of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League.

Ms Bakhtiar denounced the fatwa against her, saying that it had no legal, religious or moral authority. The photographs showed her being congratulated for making the jump at a charity event in France and that the allegations of immoral behaviour were baseless, she said. She had no regrets and would do it again happily if it helped the people of Pakistan.

Ms Bakhtiar told a Senate standing committee that her life was under threat. Human rights and political activists and many other Pakistanis had condemned the campaign against her and expressed support. But the Government did not take any action against the clerics, who are campaigning for the establishment of Taleban-style conservative Islamic rule in the capital, and instead urged her to resign. The clerics have already set up a parallel justice system and openly promote vigilantes in the city.

In a newspaper interview published yesterday Ms Bakhtiar said that she was disappointed that her Cabinet colleagues had not stood by her and hurt by the way that her jump had been sensationalised.

Her resignation was the latest blow to female politicians in Pakistan. Less than two months ago a Punjab provincial minister was shot dead in the eastern city of Gujranwala because she was not wearing a veil.

Maulana Abdul Aziz, the chief cleric of the Lal Mosque in Islamabad, and his brother, Abdur Rashid Gazi, are leading a campaign to establish hardline Sharia. They have openly challenged the Government and encouraged vigilantes to patrol the streets.

The mosque’s baton-wielding devotees have set up so-called morality patrols telling local shops not to sell “unIslamic” music and films. Followers have become a common sight at traffic lights, where they warn women to stop driving as it is a “sin” against Islam.

Shrouded from head to toe in black burkas, female students of a seminary known as Madrassa Hafza attached to the mosque regularly raid houses that they claim are being used as brothels.

Holy orders

— Aishah Azmi, the Bradford classroom assistant who refused to remove her veil in school last year, said she was obeying a fatwa issued by a local cleric

— Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a writer and politician, and the director Theo van Gogh were the subject of fatwas for Submission, their short film about Islam's treatment of women. Van Gogh was murdered in 2004

— Last month the Pakistani cleric Maulana Fazal Ullah pronounced a fatwa against polio vaccinations, causing some 4,000 children to go without them. He argued they were a Western plot to cause infertility

— Sania Mirza, a Top 100 tennis player and the highest-ranked female player in Indian history, was put under a fatwa in 2005 demanding that she play in Islamic dress. She has yet to comply with it

Sources: Times archives

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