Peshawar: Pakistani police have arrested a cleric after a video of him went viral on social media in which he threatens Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai over her recent comments about marriage, officials said.
The cleric, Mufti Sardar Ali Haqqani, was arrested in Lakki Marwat, a district in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said Waseem Sajjad, a local police chief. In the video, the cleric threatens to target Malala with a suicide attack when she returns to Pakistan, allegedly because of her comments earlier this month to British Vogue magazine about marriage that he claims insulted Islam.
At one point in the Vogue interview, Malala says: “I still don’t understand why people have to get married. If you want to have a person in your life, why do you have to sign marriage papers, why can’t it just be a partnership?”
The remark caused a stir on social media in Pakistan and angered Islamists and clerics like Haqqani. Under Islamic laws, couples cannot live together outside marriage.
