The Fatwa, or religious ruling, by the court set up in Islamabad’s Red Mosque followed last week’s publication of a photograph in some national dailies that showed Tourism Minister Nilofar Bakhtiar embracing her veteran instructor as she landed after a jump.

Seeking ‘punishment’ for Bakhtiar, the hard-line clerics claimed that the minister’s acts violated the injunctions of Islam and went against the societal values of segregation of the sexes.

The radical administrators of the mosque established their own Islamic court last Friday and gave a one-month deadline for the implementation of Sharia Islamic laws in the country.

Female students of a madrassa religious school affiliated with the mosque last month also launched an anti-vice campaign in Islamabad and asked shop owners to stop the sale of audio and video discs that, according to them, contained obscene material.

The students have been occupying an adjacent public library for more than two months in protest against the demolition of some illegal mosques in Islamabad by the local authorities.

Militancy is on the rise in the Red Mosque and adjoining seminary where the radical clerics and students have threatened to carry out suicide bombings if the government took any action against them.