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Lahore: A man belonging to the minority Ahmadi community has been arrested on blasphemy charges for distributing food and soft drinks among people on Ashura in Pakistan's Punjab province, a police official said on Monday.
According to the police official, the Ahmadi man was seen distributing ‘biryani’ and soft drinks to people in Rawalpindi’s Gulshanabad on Ashura, the 10th day of mourning in Muharram to commemorate the 7th-century martyrdom of the Prophet's grandson, Imam Hussein. He claimed the suspect "posed himself as Muslim".
The suspect was sent to jail on judicial remand for seven days, the official said.
Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya Pakistan spokesperson Amir Mahmood condemned the police action merely for offering food and water.
“Distribution of biryani and soft drinks has been declared a crime for Ahmadis. How can distributing food to fellow citizens out of humanity be prohibited,” he asked.
The growing extremism in Pakistan may lead to a day when no one will be allowed to offer even a glass of water to another, he said.
Punjab police booked the man, identified as Faizan Ahmad, under Section 298(C) of the Pakistan Penal Code, a controversial law that prohibits Ahmadis from referring to themselves as Muslims or engaging in Muslim practices.
The police official said under the law, Ahmadis cannot perform Islamic rituals.
“Since Faizan Ahmad performed Islamic rituals, he was booked under the blasphemy law and subsequently was arrested,” he said.
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 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.