PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/EXPRESS
During the first week of August, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) during an anti-encroachment operation at the I-11 Afghan Basti also bulldozed some eight illegally-built mosques and three religious seminaries in the settlement.
A group of clerics headed by Mufti Abdullah — an influential religious figure — has approached the city managers demanding alternate plots to reconstruct the razed mosques and madrassas.
Abdullah was prayer leader at the demolished Bilal Masjid and also the in-charge of another mosque and a seminary, the Madrassa Jamia Hussain, at the I-11 settlement.
The CDA’s estate management wing has received a written request by Abdullah, confirmed a senior CDA official requesting anonymity.
After two meetings over the issue between CDA officials and clerics’ representatives, the request has been admitted and forwarded to the planning wing, he confirmed.
The official said during a recent meeting with CDA high-ups Abdullah also produced documents of the Auqaf Department showing his ownership and status of the demolished mosque.
“The planning wing will determine Abdullah’s claim whether he ever purchased land from CDA and that if the plots where the mosque and seminary were constructed were meant for such structures,” the official added.
According to the CDA record, the demolished mosques at the settlement include Bilal Masjid, Madina Masjid, Jamia Masjid Talha, Jamia Masjid Allah-o-Akbar, Cheragh Masjid, Usmania Masjid, Jamia Masjid Noor, Masjid Abdullah bin Masud. The seminaries include Madrassa Jamia Hassain, Madrassa Shaheen-al-Quran and Madrassa Hafez-al-Quran.
Administrators of all these mosques and seminaries belong to the Deobandi school of thought.
Historical perspective
This is not the first time such a request has been made in the aftermath of the demolition of illegal mosques.
A religious group had managed to get six priced plots on the same grounds from the CDA in the past.
In 2007, during the regime of Gen (retd) Pervaiz Mushraf, CDA had demolished seven mosques in various areas of the city.
These mosques were illegally constructed on right of ways and termed sensitive by security agencies due to their location.
To curb the protests and agitation by clerics — spearheaded by Lal Masjid chief cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz — the CDA had doled out some six priced plots to clerics as alternate sites for reconstruction of the demolished mosques.
CDA spokesperson Ramzan Sajid acknowledged the receipt of Abdullah’s request saying the documents produced by the administrators would be scrutinised and matched with the CDA record to substantiate the claim.
When contacted, Abdullah said the mosques demolished at the slum were over 30 years old.
Quoting a decision of the Council of Islamic Ideology that says, according to Abdullah, that “any mosque once constructed on state land will not be subject to demolition,” he said the clerics were right in their demand of alternate sites.
He said he had demanded the CDA to allot plots in Sector I-11 or other nearby sectors already reserved for mosques’ construction.
He said the issue was not limited to the I-11 slum as he being the president of an ulema committee formed by the Auqaf Department and having representation from Majlis-e-Ulema, Islamabad, Jammat Ahle Sunnat, and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam was pursuing the issue of demolished mosques since long.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 27th, 2015.
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