Bangladesh: Tangail Ahmadyyias pass days in fear

Mojibur Rahman, president of the Chandtara Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat, said that they had the mosque in place since 1972 and it was destroyed by the local people in 2010.

File photo: Ahmadiyya Muslim call to prayer

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: New Age | Bangladesh
By Mohiuddin Alamgir . Ghatail, Tangail | November 20, 2011

The Ahmadiyyas living at Ghatail in Tangail are passing their days in fear after a group of villages attacked them and stopped the reconstruction of their mosque.

The latest of the series of attacks took place on November 15. Angered at the Ahmadiyyas’ move to rebuild the mosque in the area, villagers, patronised allegedly by the local influential people, earlier vandalised and looted almost all the houses of the 32 Ahmadiyya families on June 17, August 8 and August 8 in 2010. At least 20 members of the community were injured.

Local Ahmadiyya leader Ibrahim Hossain on November 14 told New Age that the police had pulled down the tin fence set up to reconstruct the mosque at Chandtara in the upazila.

The Ghatail upazila nirbahi officer, Begum Aleya Khatun, the Ghatail police officer-in-charge, Helalul Islam and the Jamuria union

Ibrahim said, ‘A group of local people led by Imam Mufti Nasiruddin of Ghatail upazila council mosque, local ward councillor Akbar Hossain, Chandtara Uttar Government Primary School headmaster Akhter hossain, Kamruzzaman and others have for long been campaigning against the Ahmadiyyas in the village.’

Aleya Khatun, Helalul and Shahidul all brushed aside being involved in the matter and lending support to anyone in such campaign when they talked with New Age.


Aleya said that villagers, and not the administration, had stopped the construction work. ‘We took an initiative to keep law and order as we wanted no violence in the area.’

Mojibur Rahman, president of the Chandtara Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat, said that they had the mosque in place since 1972 and it was destroyed by the local people in 2010.

He said that local people were saying, ‘Kadianis [Ahmadiyyas] have no iman [faith]. They are non-Muslims. No rickshaw-puller should carry them and no shopkeeper should sell anything to them.’

‘We have already filed five cases against the people who attacked us but hardly there has been any change in the situation,’ Ibrahim added

‘Even when I went to file a general diary two days before the November 14 attack, the police declined to register the general diary,’ he said.

Both the leaders alleged that their community had been attacked by the same people in June and August 2010.

Akbar and Akhter both said that if they allowed the mosque to be built in the area, it could create a problem. ‘We will not allow any attack religious sentiment,’ Akhter said.


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