Vigilante enforcement of theocratic codes can crop up when a minority group doesn’t conform…A friend, a Pakistani journalist, recently came out of the troubled Swat valley in northwest Pakistan and told a chilling tale. He said, “It is now halal [religiously sanctioned] to kill journalists.” The tribal Muslim clerics in Swat, he said, have declared open season on reporters whose writings they disapprove of. My friend, a brave and devout Sunni Muslim, seemed quite shaken, having spent two weeks reporting under threat in Swat, an area once called the Switzerland of Pakistan. Several journalists have already been murdered for a perceived breach of theocratic codes.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0507/p09s01-coop.html