ISLAMABAD • 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."
