Police allegedly demolished the minarets of a 40-year-old worship place of the minority Ahmadi community in Pakistan’s Punjab province, the Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya Pakistan said on Monday.
The incident took place in Okara, Depalpur, about 130 kilometres from Lahore. Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya Pakistan (JAP) official Amir Mahmood told PTI on Monday that over a dozen policemen of Punjab police demolished the minarets at the Ahmadi worship place in Subhan Shah and also removed the sacred words.
“Under the supervision of the DSP, two police mobiles arrived from the Depalpur Police Station, raided the Ahmadi worship place and demolished the minarets after cordoning off the area. They also removed the sacred words while using cement,” he said and added that this worship place was constructed before 1984.
Justice Tariq Saleem Sheikh of the Lahore High Court last year made it clear in his decision that the structures of the Ahmadi worship places built before 1984 need no amendment. The police on the other hand said that they demolished the minarets of Ahmadi worship place after the local Ahmadis refused to do so.
“We received a complaint against the minarets of Ahmadi worship place in Depalpur. We had summoned the local Ahmadis and asked them to demolish the minarets as they are identical to Muslim mosques. On their refusal, police demolished them,” a police official told PTI.
Mahmood said that last year at least 42 worship places of Ahmadis in Pakistan came under attack. The Ahmadi community in Pakistan has often come under attack for their religious practice. Although Ahmadis consider themselves Muslims, Pakistan’s Parliament in 1974 declared the community as non-Muslims.
A decade later, they were not just banned from calling themselves Muslims but were also barred from practising aspects of Islam. These include constructing or displaying any symbol that identifies them as Muslims such as building minarets or domes on mosques, or publicly writing verses from the Quran.
Most Ahmadi worship places have come under attack from the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) activists while in other incidents, police on the pressure of religious extremists demolished minarets and arches and removed sacred writings. The TLP says that the Ahmadi worship places are similar to that of Muslim mosques because they have minarets.
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