ISLAMABAD, April 26: The National Assembly on Thursday tasted a Taliban-like move taking a summary cultural toll as the government seemed making a double retreat -- over a drama featuring the burqa (veil) and in a row with the opposition over the country’s judicial crisis.

While its seeming appeasement of religious militants seeking to enforce their brand of a Taliban-style religious code in Islamabad has aroused concern among both its friends and foes, the government told the lower house it had immediately stopped any more shows of the drama produced in Lahore, bowing to demands from burqa-clad members of religious parties who said the production made in Lahore was contrary to Quranic injunctions.

Both protests and cheers across party lines greeted the announcement by Culture Minister Ghazi Ghulam Jamal, who said he had called for video cassettes and CDs of the play ‘Burqavaganza’ produced by Lahore’s Ajoka Theatre and that the Punjab provincial government had been told "not to allow any more shows (of the drama) until we have examined it" to decide if its contents were objectionable on religious or cultural grounds.

The charge, rejected by the drama’s producers with a vow to fight it out in a court of law, came up in a call-attention notice from five MMA women members before it emerged that the government would avoid a debate promised for Thursday on its own resolution moved on Wednesday to condemn the opposition for allegedly trying to politicise and divide the judiciary through demonstrations.

The opposition parties accused the government of running away from the debate for which they said they were prepared, though Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi said the resolution had become the property of the house and could not be withdrawn and, in an apparently non-serious move, Law and Justice Minister Mohammad Wasi Zafar came back to the house towards the fag-end of the proceedings after a considerable absence to deny the charge.

MMA member Liaquat Baloch said he had moved an amendment to the government’s resolution that would instead condemn the presidential action and call for a withdrawal of the reference.

It was not clear whether the debate would be held on Friday, which had also been set for taking up seven opposition adjournment motions seeking a debate on punitive notices issued by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) to some private television channels over their coverage of the protests by lawyers and opposition parties against the presidential reference.

All opposition parties and journalists covering the session also staged token walkouts over the Pemra actions.

NO BURQA FUN: Responding to the MMA call-attention notice, Culture Minister Jamal, elected to the National Assembly from Fata, said burqa was part of ‘our culture’ and nobody could be allowed to make a fun of it, and even threatened that the government could permanently ban the concerned drama and cancel the licence of its producers.

(But Ajoka artistic director and Burqavaganza producer Madeeha Gauhar told Dawn by telephone from Lahore that there was nothing un-Islamic in her musical comedy that she said was produced in response to a threat of Talibanisation posed by clerics of Lal Masjid and their madressah followers.

She said her group was supporting President Musharraf’s policy of ‘enlightened moderation’ in Islam but regretted the latest government move against the drama after only five shows, saying she would go to a court of law to challenge if a government notice was received by Ajoka. "It is unacceptable.")

ANTI-ARMY SLOGANS: The question of the virtual revolt announced by the clerics of Lal Masjid and their followers also came up during the house proceedings when PPP’s Naheed Khan asked PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain to confirm or deny news reports that quoted him as saying that a peace deal negotiated by him would let Jamia Hafsa keep an occupied government library and that anybody raising slogans against the army should be shot.

The PML chief sidestepped the question about the education ministry’s children’s library occupied by female students of Jamia Hafsa in January, but said he would stick to his remark about the army, which he said had made during a US visit after watching somebody on television chanting "na-Pak fauj murdabad".

"I said then that whoever has raised this slogan must be shot," Mr Hussain said, evoking a supportive remark from Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain: "On this everybody agrees."

But Ms Khan, who also asked whether police would register a case against the PML president if somebody was shot dead for raising anti-military slogans, and PML-N member Saad Rafiq stressed their parties were opposed to only those generals who usurped power rather than the entire army.