Muslim leader calls for cartoon protests across Pakistan

A coalition of radical Islamic parties called for nationwide protests in Pakistan today after police arrested hundreds of religious activists to thwart a weekend rally against Prophet Mohammed cartoons in the eastern city of Lahore.

The alliance of six hard-line Muslim parties called Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), or United Action Forum, declared today “a protest day” after security forces prevented yesterday’s planned rally in Lahore, said alliance politician Liaqat Baluch.

He said that women supporters of the coalition would defy a government ban on protests and hold a rally in Lahore later today to express anger over the publication of the cartoons, deemed blasphemous by Muslims.

The images were first published by a Danish newspaper in September and then by other publications around the world. The cartoons have ignited violent protests across the Muslim world that have killed at least 45 people.

Pakistan banned anti-cartoon rallies in the capital Islamabad, Lahore and other eastern cities after several recent demonstrations turned deadly.

Hundreds of MMA supporters were arrested in Lahore at the weekend in a pre-emptive effort by police to quash the rally, said Baluch, who is also the group’s deputy secretary-general.

Khawaja Khalid Farooq, chief of police in Lahore, did not have details of the number of opposition activists arrested in Lahore, saying “we have rounded up dozens of activists who had tried to break the ban on holding rallies and processions.”

He said the rally planned by women activists of the religious alliance, a group known as Shan-e-Mustafa, was illegal and that authorities would “not allow them to hold the rally”.

Another Lahore police official said 683 alliance supporters were arrested in Lahore yesterday for trying to hold a rally in violation of the ban.

All had been or would be charged with violating the public peace and violating a ban on rallying, he said.

Also today, police arrested several supporters of another religious alliance as they tried to board a train from Lahore to Rawalpindi, a city near the capital Islamabad, said Azmat Ali, another police officer.

More protests, which target the President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and the United States as well as the cartoons, are scheduled for Friday – a day before US President George Bush visits Islamabad on his trip to South Asia.

Bush told Pakistani reporters last week that there was no chance that protests would cause him to cancel his visit.

A crowd of 25,000 Muslims, some chanting anti-American slogans, rallied peacefully against the cartoons yesterday in the southern city of Karachi, where protests have not been banned.