World News | Mob Vandalises Ahmadi Place of Worship in Karachi

Karachi, Sep 4 (PTI) An Ahmadi place of worship was vandalised by a mob in Pakistan's Karachi city on Monday, police said.

Following the incident in the Saddar area, police arrested three people in connection with the attack, Karachi mayor Murtaza Wahab said.

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Videos circulating on social media purportedly show masked men using sledgehammers to damage the minarets on the rooftop of the Ahmadiyya Hall while others outside the building shout slogans.

The place of worship is located just two lanes away from the Preedy police station in the bustling Saddar area.

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Amir Mehmood, a spokesman for the Jamaat Ahmadiyya in Pakistan, said around 10 people attacked the building shortly after the afternoon prayers.

They entered the place of worship and began vandalizing property. Some of them climbed to the rooftop and used hammers to damage the minarets, he said.

Mehmood told Dawn newspaper that “around 10 people initially attacked their hall at the time of Zuhr prayer...The security guard on duty fired into the air to disperse them. They fled but later a mob showed up and started chanting slogans against the Ahmadi community”.

He claimed some of the worshippers inside the hall were also roughed up by the mob.

Mehmood said the same worship hall had been vandalised on February 3, and although five suspects were initially arrested, the police later released them.

“By not pursuing these cases against the culprits, the law enforcers and the government are, in a way, encouraging them to continue targeting our community halls in Karachi and other parts of the country,” he said.

Ahmadis are usually referred to as Qadianis in Pakistan, which is considered a derogatory term for them.

Pakistan's Parliament in 1974 declared the Ahmadi community as non-Muslims. A decade later, they were banned from calling themselves Muslims. They are banned from preaching and from travelling to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage.

Although the number of Ahmadis in Pakistan is around a million, unofficial figures put their population much higher.

In Pakistan, around 10 million out of the 220 million population are non-Muslims. The minorities in conservative Muslim-majority Pakistan often complain of harassment by the extremists.

Earlier on July 25, an Ahmadi place of worship was vandalised in Karachi's Drigh Road area.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)