Source/Credit: Daily Dawn | Pakistan
By Nabeel Anwar Dhakku | October 4, 2011
CHAKWAL, Oct 4: A seminary student has been arrested for allegedly burning some pages of the holy Quran to save them from desecration.
Twenty-year-old Junaid Ahmed, a student at a seminary attached to Imdadia Mosque on Rawalpindi Road, was disposing of the pages by burning them on Monday evening when he was seen by some people who subjected him to severe torture and got a case of blasphemy registered against him.
Junaid, a resident of the Hazro village in Attock district, was studying at the madressah run by Mufti Jameelur Rahman of Tehrik Khuddam Ahl-i-Sunnat.
He got permission from one of his teachers to take the torn pages of Quran to a well built for the purpose of preserving the sacred pages. When he reached there he noticed that the well was already filled and some torn pages of Quran were also scattered there.
Junaid’s fellow students said they had learnt that the torn pages of Quran could be burnt if burying them or consigning them to the river or sea was not possible.
One Akhtar Nisar saw Junaid burning the pages and raised a hue and cry. Some people gathered there and started torturing the student. He kept pleading that he was burning the holy pages to protect them from desecration, but the crowd did not listen to him. Akhtar later informed police who arrested the boy.
On Tuesday, police produced him before the court of Magistrate Aitasham Muqarab. Junaid told the court that he was a devout Muslim and could never think of blaspheming the holy book. “Had I known that this act could be considered as a blasphemy I would never have done it,” the frightened boy told the magistrate.
The court sent him on judicial lockup to Jhelum prison.
“Junaid could not even think of blaspheming the holy book which he used to recite passionately and devotedly,” Mufti Rehman told Dawn. He said Sharia permitted burning the torn pages of Quran to save them from desecration, but this was not acceptable in our society.
“There are three ways to dispose of the torn copies of Quran: bury them in flowing water, bury them in the earth or burn them if the first two options are not possible,” Mufti Rehman said, adding that there was no sin if Junaid had chosen the third option.
“We will fight the case in the court and I hope we will get justice,” he said.
When contacted, complainant Akhtar said: “I have heard from Qazi Lateef (a cleric) who received his religious education from India that burning the torn pages of Quran is blasphemy.”
Police will submit a chalan in a few days.
“This is a sheer injustice on the part of police who acted is haste to register an FIR and produce the boy in the court,” Advocate Qazi Umar, the counsel for Junaid, told Dawn.
Read original post here: Seminary student arrested for ‘blasphemy’
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