LAHORE: Police in Faisalabad arrested three men belonging to the Ahmadiya faith on Sunday, the first day of Eid ul-Adha, for “hurting Muslim sentiments” by sacrificial offering of animals on the religious festival.
The men were arrested right after a first information report (FIR) was filed against five people, Saleem ud-Din, a spokesperson for Jamaat-i-Ahmadiyya Pakistan, told the press.
The FIR, registered at Thikriwala police station, said that complainants were present in a mosque after Eid ul-Adha prayers when they came to know through verified sources that residents of the Ahmadi community were sacrificing animals inside their homes.
“The complainants then reached the area and climbed the roofs of nearby houses, to find that the members of the Ahmadiyya community were sacrificing a goat at one place while the other members were cutting the meat of another animal at a different place,” the report said.
“The Islamic sentiments of the complainants and other Muslims were hurt by this and [the complainants] recorded a video which can be presented as evidence,” it added.
“By performing a ritual in line with Islamic beliefs and presenting themselves as Muslims despite being Ahmadis, they have committed a cognisable offence, according to Muslim ummah’s belief, and this has grievously hurt Muslim sentiments,” the complainants stated in the report.
Saleem ud-Din said the slaughter was being performed within the confines of a house and not in a public place. “The community is being persecuted,” he said.
Pakistan’s five million Ahmadis claim that the faith’s founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was a messiah.
Laws, passed since the 1970s, ban Ahmadis from describing themselves as Muslims or carrying out core Islamic practices such as performing the call to prayer or building minarets on their places of worship, which they are banned from calling mosques.
