LAHORE, Pakistan — In an apparent expansion of Islamic fundamentalists’ authority in the Swat Valley, local Pakistani officials have agreed to close shops at prayer times and crack down on prostitution and drug dealing as part of a proposed peace deal, local media reported Thursday.
The steps were among 17 points agreed to at a Wednesday meeting involving provincial government officials and supporters of a pro-Taliban cleric mediating the talks. Other steps reportedly include banning obscene films and cracking down on corruption.
Sharia, or Islamic law, has been practiced in many parts of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier province and its tribal areas, but its official expansion into a region less than 100 miles from Islamabad, the capital, under a February truce with militants has alarmed secular groups, human-rights activists and Western officials.
The deal has sparked fears that conceding authority to extremists will only expand their power, while supporters counter that the agreement only codifies the reality on the ground and that it could divide different fundamentalist groups and ultimately strengthen the government’s hand.
Pakistani authorities received some concessions in return for allowing Sharia in Swat Valley, once a top tourist destination. Militants have agreed not to display their weapons in public, and officials have pledged that girls will be allowed to attend schools, although the agreement reportedly doesn’t mention that issue.
In a separate development underscoring the debate in Pakistan over religious extremism, a bomb exploded Thursday at the mausoleum of 17th-century Sufi poet Rahman Baba in Peshawar after its management received a letter complaining that women were praying there. No one was injured.
