Pakistan Bans Newsweek Issue

Authorities banned an issue of Newsweek magazine for publishing material they said was offensive to Islam, local media reported Friday.

A government official in Islamabad ordered the “forfeiture of all copies of the weekly Newsweek of Nov. 22,” the state-run agency Associated Press of Pakistan reported, quoting Tariq Mahmood Bajwa, a government official in the capital.

The edition published “objectionable remarks ... tantamount to desecration of the Koran,” the agency said.

Authorities were considering legal action against the magazine, the report said, but gave no details.

The ban didn’t come until nearly all copies of the issue had already been sold at bookstalls, said a security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Newsweek spokeswoman Jan Angilella said the magazine had no comment.

The magazine’s Nov. 22 issue carried a story about the slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, as well as the religious and ethnic divisions in Europe, which appeared under the headline “Clash of Civilizations.”

A Moroccan Dutch man has been arrested as a suspect in the slaying.

The News, a Pakistani English-language newspaper, said Friday that the banned edition included an image from Van Gogh’s film about Islam’s treatment of women that showed verses from the Koran written on the body of a semi-naked woman.

At least 97% of the 150 million people living in Pakistan are Muslims.