Zardari Slapped With Fatwa for Flirting With Palin

Pakistani feminists also angry at president for 'shameful' behavior
By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 2, 2008 12:32 PM CDT
Zardari Slapped With Fatwa for Flirting With Palin
Republican vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, left, meets with Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2008, in New York.    (AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams)

Asif Ali Zardari’s overly-friendly interaction with Sarah Palin earned Pakistan’s president a fatwa from a conservative mosque for salacious behavior, not to mention the scorn of feminists who accuse him of objectifying the US vice-presidential candidate, the Christian Science Monitor reports. At the UN last week, Zardari told Palin she was “gorgeous,” continuing, “Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you.”

The fatwa accused the husband of late prime minister Benazir Bhutto of “indecent gestures, filthy remarks, and repeated praise of a non-Muslim lady wearing a short skirt,” but stops short of ordering violence. Feminists charge Zardari’s behavior demeaned Palin: “He was looking upon her merely as a woman and not as a politician in her own right … it was shameful,” one said. (More Muslim stories.)

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