Paintings outrage Islamic hardliners in Pakistan

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan’s leading arts college has pushed boundaries before in this conservative nation. But when an uproar erupted over a series of paintings depicting Muslim clerics in scenes with strong homosexual overtones, prompting threats of violence by Islamic extremists, it was too much.

Officials at the National College of Arts in the eastern city of Lahore shut down its academic journal, which published the paintings, pulled all its issues out of bookstores and dissolved its editorial board. Still, a court is currently considering whether the paintings’ artist, the journal’s board and the school’s head can be charged with blasphemy.