Sabir Durrani says he offers prayers almost every day at a mosque in the central Pakistani city of Multan. He says that often a dozen or more men are in attendance - none of them wearing protective face masks.
FILE PHOTO: A police officer uses a megaphone, requesting people to go and pray at home, at the locked entrance gate of a mosque during a lockdown after Pakistan shut all markets, public places and discouraged large gatherings amid an outbreak of the coronavirus disease , in Karachi, Pakistan March 27, 2020. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro/File Photo
The Islamic lobby holds immense clout in Pakistan, a country of over 200 million people. Religious parties have not been successful in electoral politics but they are able to whip up large, often violent, crowds on matters pertaining to religion, such as in support of the country’s harsh blasphemy law.
But the worry is of a big spike coming from the congregational prayers held in mosques, especially on Fridays, the Islamic sabbath. The numbers in attendance at prayers are likely to increase with the onset of the holy month of Ramadan within two weeks, and authorities are struggling to cope. “If you do this, we will be forced to think that mosques are being deserted on America’s instructions,” Mufti Kafayatullah told the crowd. “We’re ready to give our lives, but not ready to desert our mosques.”In Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, police were attacked for a second straight week as they attempted to halt prayers at a mosque last Friday. A policewoman was injured in the clashes, and in the previous week, police fired shots in the air to quell an angry mob.
“I think it’s partly appeasement and partly the fact that Pakistan’s governments and politics are locked permanently in an electoral framework in which they don’t want to lose support of the religious elite and religious proletariat,” Pakistani author and defence analyst Ayesha Siddiqa told Reuters.
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