Kotli [PoK], February 16 : A mosque belonging to the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in the Kotli district of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) was vandalized, the community that faces frequent attacks and persecution in Pakistan.
Sources reveal that a group of 50 people equipped with hammers, shovels, and sticks formed a mob and stormed the mosque on Monday, injuring eight Ahmadi worshippers, including five women, and destroying all of the mosque's four minarets.
Videos and pictures that surfaced on social media platform X have shown the mosque's four minarets being desecrated by a mob.
The Ahmadi Muslims are addressed as Qadianis by both Sunni and Shia Muslims in Pakistan, who also frequently make open calls for an Islamist jihad to finish off the community.
Apart from religious persecution, the Ahmadis also face economic hardships in Pakistan and its occupied territories, where both Sunnis and Shiites consider them impure and boycott their businesses.
In 2018, the so-called parliament in PoK also declared the Ahmadi Muslims as infidels. Although Ahmadis identify themselves as Muslims, an amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan in 1974 declared the Ahmadis as non-Muslims.
This provision is still included in the current Constitution. The civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Ahmadiyya minority have progressively been negated on account of doctrinal differences with the majority community.
Time and again, the United Nations and other international rights groups have raised concerns over the persecution of the Ahmadiyya minority in Pakistan.
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