Palin has not had much luck with feminists at home, but her meeting with a flirtatious Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, last week has resulted in an unlikely union between a Pakistani hard-line conservative mosque and Pakistani feminists. Zadari who was more than happy to see Palin, as you can see from the above video, offered her the following compliments “You are more gorgeous than you are on [television]…Now I see why the whole of America is crazy about you…if he [Zadari’s aide] insists, I might hug you.”
Nice for Palin, too bad for Zadari, who now has a fatwa issued against him by Islamabad prayer leader Lal Masjid. According to Amir Mir of the Indian site DNA, Lal Masjid regarded Zadari’s gestures as “indecent…filthy remarks…unbecoming of a head of state of a Muslim country.” Whereas, Lal Masjid issued the fatwa because, in his eyes, he saw Zadari flirting with the enemy, Pakistani feminists are more concerned about the fact that Zadari’s compliments were innapropriate for a widower and for a political setting. Time’s Omar Wariach quotes a leading Pakistani woman’s rights activist saying, “I feel it’s absolutely shameful and a disgrace, it is against diplomatic protocol. And he is supposed to be mourning the loss of his illustrious and so-called beloved wife. Instead, he’s flirting with [Palin] in public. He should apologize to her and to Pakistanis.”