Islamabad, Pakistan
Clerics at the biggest mosque in Pakistan’s capital city have set up a Taliban-style Islamic court and threatened suicide bombings if their edicts are not followed. Some 11,000 students attend the Lal Masjid mosque’s madrasa, and many of them have already begun enforcing their version of sharia, Islamic law. Recently, female students who were veiled and armed with sticks kidnapped a woman who allegedly ran a brothel. When police tried to free her, the students took several officers hostage. The mosque’s latest fatwa calls for the country’s female tourism minister to be fired because she hugged her parachuting instructor, a man, after her first jump.
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