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Ahmadiyyas seek PM protection
Bigots in Uttara continue their hate campaign; rights bodies vow to resist mosque capture threat

The Ahmadiyya community yesterday appealed to prime minister for protection in wake of threat by religious fanatics to attack their mosque in Uttara tomorrow.

Mobasherur Rahman, amir of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat Bangladesh, submitted applications to the PM and state minister for home, seeking protection and detailing the fresh hate campaign of the bigots against the community.

An alliance of human rights organisations, the Working Group on Minority rights, vowed to resist the fanatics on Friday, asking the government to take necessary security measures for Ahmadiyyas in the Ashkona area.

Meanwhile, activists of the anti-Ahmadiyya outfit – Khatme Nabuwat Movement Bangladesh – from across the country started to gather at different Kowmi madrasas in Uttara to carry out tomorrow’s programme, announced by a little known radical Islamist ‘leader’ Noor Hossain Nurani.

The self-declared ‘Islamist militant leader’ vowed to attack the Ashkona Ahmadiyya Mosque and loot houses of 22 Ahmadiyya families there, the community in its letters stated.

Nurani is spreading hatred against Ahmadiyyas with false and imaginary information about our religion, they said.

The letters said both leaders (Nurani and Mahmudul Hasan Momtazi) of anti-Ahmadiyya outfits are out to create anarchy and disrupt law and order in the name of Islam ahead of the general election.

“Such a declaration of terrorism and their activities in the name of Islam are enough to ban the organisations. It is also tarnishing the image of the country in the abroad,” the letters read.

Zealots conducted hate campaign yesterday from two trucks in front of the Ashkona Ahmadiyya Jame Mosque, vowing to oust Ahmadiyyas form the area after capturing their mosque. The zealots took shelter at the Northapara Babus Salam Kowmi Madrasa, Dakkhinkhan Bazaar Al Arabi Kowmi Madrasa, Falan Kowmi Madrasa, Moktarbari Kowmi Madrasa and Askona Bazar Boro Mosque Kowmi Madrasa.

“Encouraged apparently by the government’s policy, the fundamentalists dared to attack our men and capture our mosques across the country again and again,” Central Ahmadiyya Missionary Abdul Awal Khan told The Daily Star yesterday.

Rights organisations – the Ain O Salish Kendra, Bangladesh Mahila Parishad, Bangladesh Coalition for Child Rights, Bangladesh Development Partnership, Nari O Manobadhikar Foundation, Nari Pokkho and Durbar Network – yesterday announced at a press conference that they would go to Ashkona to resist the fanatics.

Source: www.thedailystar.net/2006/06/22/d6062201128.htm