Pakistani cleric issues fatwa against fashion magazine

ISLAMABAD, June 16 (Reuters) The chief cleric at a radical mosque in Pakistan's capital Islamabad has issued a death decree against staff at a magazine for publishing a fashion-shoot advertisement entitled ''Adam and Eve''.

Pakistani authorities have been locked in a confrontation with clerics at Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, for months, and the radicals have threatened suicide bomb reprisals if force were used to break up their movement.

The decree, known as a fatwa, against the chief editor, publisher and other staffers of an English language magazine called Octane is the latest challenge by the mosque's clerics to President Pervez Musharraf's government.

''In the magazine's June edition blasphemy was committed against Hazrat (Prophet) Adam and Eve... Those responsible for the magazine are liable to death,'' Lal Masjid's chief cleric, Maulana Abdul Aziz, said in a statement.

The offending photographs were titled ''Adam and Eve - Apple the Bone of Contention'', and showed two models in scanty designer-wear costumes holding an apple.

Octane's editor, Zubair Kasuri, said it was just a commercial advertisement and contained nothing blasphemous, and had been published before by other magazines.

''But even then if it creates any misunderstanding or conveys any wrong perception, we are ready to apologise.'' In April, Aziz issued a decree against a women minister after newspapers published a photograph of her hugging her instructor after a para-jump to raise money for earthquake victims.

Followers of the Lal Mosque have become increasingly bold in their self-styled anti-vice campaign, raising fear that for all his talks of ''enlightened moderation'' Musharraf is unable to stem the trend towards Talibanisation.

Male and female students of the mosque have been visiting video shops, urging them close down their businesses.

The students also abducted three women they accused of running a brothel and forced them to confess in public before releasing them.

President Pervez Musharraf has said he felt humiliated by his inability to oust the radicals, who have close to 5,000 followers drawn from associated madrasas.

Fears of a backlash if any of the female students were hurt in an assault has stayed the government's hand, according to the president.

In a separate incident yesterday, a Pakistani police official shot dead one man and wounded another, who were being held on accusations that they had insulted the Prophet Mohammad.

The slain man and three others, all Muslims, were arrested early this week in the eastern town of Gujrat for distributing blasphemous material, and were shifted to a police lock-up in nearby Kharian town to save protect them from religious zealots.

REUTERS HK PM1806