Pak Ahmadis prevented from sacrificing animals on Eid

Police today stopped members of Pakistan's minority Ahmadi community from slaughtering animals here on Eid-u-Azha after Muslim clerics complained that the ritual of animal sacrifice "is an Islamic injunction whereas Ahmadis are non-Muslims".

Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya Pakistan Punjab spokesman Amer Mahmood told PTI that the Ahmadi community could not "sacrifice the animals" on Eid days in Krishan Nagar (old Lahore) and Sabzazar areas after local Muslim clerics made an announcement in mosques that the Ahmadis were following Muslim rituals.

As the tension between Muslims and Ahmadis gripped the areas, the police were also called.

The police reached there and instead of stopping the locals from intervening in the affairs of the minority community took Ahmadis into their custody.

However, on the intervention of the elders of the Ahmadis the police set them free, Mahmood said.

"We gave a written undertaking that the Ahmadis would not sacrifice any animal," he added.

This was the fourth such incident in Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province.

Pakistan's Ahmadis consider themselves Muslim but were declared non-Muslims through a constitutional amendment in 1974.

A decade later, they were barred from proselytising or identifying themselves as Muslims.

Some 1.5 million Ahmadis live across the country.

Earlier too, Ahmadis have faced police action in Lahore.

On September 22, Punjab Police demolished the domes of two mosques of the minority sect in central Punjab province.

They also whitewashed Quranic verses painted on the mosques in Sialkot district, Ahmadi leaders alleged.

Earlier, police had demolished domes and removed plaques from graves of Ahmadis in Lahore, Kharian and Hafizabad districts at the "request" of Muslim clerics.