Muslims urged to kill writer over Miss World 'blasphemy'

The deputy governor of a largely Islamic state in northern Nigeria has called on Muslims to kill the writer of a newspaper article about the Miss World beauty pageant that set off bloody religious rioting in which more than 200 people died.

"Just like the blasphemous Indian writer Salman Rushdie, the blood of Isioma Daniel can be shed," Zamfara's deputy governor, Mahamoud Shinkafi, told Muslim groups in the state capital, Gusau. Ms Daniel, a Lagos-based fashion writer on ThisDay, was said to be in hiding after police interrogated her last week about her article, which suggested the Prophet Mohamed would have approved of Miss World, and might have wanted to marry a contestant.

State officials cannot issue fatwas – an edict by Islamic religious authorities – but the deputy governor, "like all Muslims", considered the death sentence against Ms Daniel "a reality based on the teachings of the Koran", Zamfara's information commissioner, Tukur Umar Dangaladima, said. Anyone who killed Daniel would be "a martyr who will go to Heaven". Islam's holy book "states that whoever accuses or insults any prophet of Allah ... should be killed", he added.

President Olusegun Obas-anjo did not immediately respond. But a federal Information Ministry official said Mr Obasanjo's government would not permit any Islamic group or individual to obey the fatwa.

After the article appeared, the ThisDay office in Kaduna was burnt, setting off fresh unrest in a city where Muslims and Christians clash frequently. The rioting spread briefly to Nigeria's capital, Abuja, forcing the Miss World organisers to switch the contest, scheduled for 7 December, to London.

ThisDay has repeatedly apologised, saying the offending words were published by mistake after being deleted by an editor. Mr Dangaladima said other employees of the paper had been spared the fatwa, which "applies only to the offending pen".

Zamfara was the first of 12 states to adopt Islamic sharia law, after Nigerian military rule gave way to elected government in 1999. Since then thousands of people have been killed in religious clashes.

¿ The Miss World contest will be held at Alexandra Palace in north London on 7 December, the organisers said yesterday.