Pakistan: Senator vows to remain in country despite death threats - after being fatwa-ed for a hug

When women are placed so low - they can be kicked back into their prehistoric place - by any one. The former Pakistani tourist minister - hugged her 74 year old Italian skydiving instructor after being excited about completing her first jump - safely. The Red Mosque Imam - likely the one who was caught escaping with his life – dressed in a women's burqa while all his followers were dying for Allah, including 100's of 11-14 year old girls inside the mad red mosque - this coward - who had anti tank missiles, mines and hand grenades in the mosque just outside of the Pakistani ministry of defence - issued a Ouija fatwa against the brave Nilofar Bakhtiar and has turned her life into a living hell ever since. As a shunned woman - at this time any man can walk up a kill her - the Pakistani government offers her no protection - even though her life has been repeatedly threatened. She may have to seek asylum!! They're looking to give her the Bhutto treatment.

Karachi, 21 July (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - Pakistani Senator and former tourism minister Nilofar Bakhtiar told Adnkronos International (AKI) on Monday that she will not leave the country eventhough she has received death threats.

Bakhtiar, 47, said on Sunday she had received threats of "dire consequences" if she failed "to immediately leave the country along with her family."

The threats come more than a year after a cleric issued a fatwa against Bakhtiar for having been pictured hugging one of her parachute instructors in France.

She had embraced her elderly instructor after she completed a jump in March 2007 to raise money for victims of an earthquake that killed 73,000 people in Pakistan in October 2005.

Before and after

"I come from a middle class background," Bakhtiar told AKI in a phone interview on Monday.

"Had I been from a feudal or capitalist background, would anybody dare to threaten me like this? But I tell you that I shall not leave the country and will face the situation," she said.

"I requested the federal interior ministry to provide me with the security but so far I have not been provided any security," she said.

Soon after newspapers published the photos of her hug last year, the then management of the radical Islamabad mosque, Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) issued a fatwa or religious edict against her.

The mosque's leader at the time, Maulana Abdul Aziz, also urged the government to sack her for having posed for the photograph which he had termed "obscene".

Aziz was arrested in July 2007 after security forces stormed the Lal Masjid compound to flush out Islamic militants. More than 100 people died in the fighting.

"Some media outlets are aiming to create a rift between me and the Lal Masjid administration," Baktiar told AKI.

After the controversy, Bakhtiar was not only sacked as as minister but was also removed as the president of the women's wing of the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid or PML-Q.

Despite her repeated clarifications that the instructor was the same age as her father, she has not been forgiven.

After the 18 February parliamentary elections in Pakistan, Bakhtiar developed her forward block in the Senate against the PML-Q. The party failed to support her last year despite the party's claims of supporting women's rights.

Source: AKI