Posts misleadingly link clip of 'mosque' vandalism to Pakistan's economic crisis: police
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on February 27, 2023 at 06:23
- 3 min read
- By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India
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The video was viewed more than 600 times after it was shared on Facebook on February 4, 2023. It shows men hammering off minarets of a building.
The post's Hindi-language caption translates to English as, "Such is the poverty in Pakistan that Muslims are now vandalising mosques and selling off bricks and mortars to feed themselves.
"This is the third mosque that was demolished in Karachi within a month. If Allah cannot give flour, then what's his use here."
As the claim circulated online, Pakistan's economy was in dire straits, stricken by a balance of payments crisis as it attempts to service high levels of external debt, amid political chaos and a deteriorating security situation, AFP reported.
The International Monetary Fund and Pakistan are in talks to revive a stalled loan programme that comes with conditions the prime minister described as "beyond imagination", including a hike in artificially low petrol prices that were capped to help low-income families.
However, as of February 27, 2023, there have been no official reports that Pakistan's Muslims have been demolishing mosques to "feed themselves".
Police said the clip -- also posted alongside a similar claim on Twitter and Facebook here and here -- had been shared in a misleading context.
Speaking to AFP, Karachi police commissioner Iqbal Memon said: "The incident shown in the video is altogether nothing to do with the reason that has been misleadingly mentioned on social media."
Minarets vandalised
A keyword search on Google found the same footage in a news report published by Hindustan Times, an Indian English-language daily on February 4, 2023.
It states Pakistani Islamists vandalised a place of worship belonging to the Ahmadiya community. The video's caption reads, "Pak police watch as Islamists vandalise Ahmadi 'mosque' in Karachi."
The report continues, "Pakistani law prohibits Ahmadis from calling their worship places in the country as mosques."
Ahmadis are a minority ethnic group legally declared non-Muslims in Pakistan for their belief in a prophet after Mohammed, and have long been persecuted in the deeply conservative country.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading posts (left) and the video posted by Hindustan Times (right):
The incident was also reported by Pakistani news outlet Dawn here and by Indian media organisations WION and ANI.
A spokesman for the Ahmadiya religious community told AFP the clip was filmed in Karachi's Saddar Town on February 2.
"They broke the minarets with hammers," he said. "The other extremists who were standing on the ground raised slogans against the Ahmadiya community."
Commenting on the video, Karachi's deputy police chief Javed Alam Odho told AFP tensions between Islamists and the Ahmadiya community had sparked the vandalism, over which police had made several arrests.
Since 1984, Ahmadis in Pakistan have been forbidden from referring to their place of worship as mosques following an ordinance issued by former president Zia-ul Haq.
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