Special prayers across S. Asia
Clerics honoured the dead in crowded mosques across Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, urging the faithful — even those in the quake disaster zone — not to abandon their Muslim rituals, like fasting for Ramadan.
Across Pakistan, the country hardest hit by Saturday’s massive quake, the faithful heeded President Pervez Musharraf’s call for special Friday prayers, with some spilling out of mosques to pray in streets and parks.
In the devastated city of Muzaffarabad dozens attended prayers at the three mosques that remain more or less intact following the quake.
Clerics said more than 50 other mosques in the city had been levelled or damaged in the temblor, which killed at least 25,000 people in Pakistan — 11,000 of them residents of Muzaffarabad.
The city’s chief cleric Mufti Kifayat Hussein Navqi brought worshippers to tears with his emotional prayers, but also had some harsh words for those who had stopped observing the Ramadan fast or had abandoned their damaged homes.
“Many have left their fast. This is not good,” the chief cleric told AFP, summarizing his weekly sermon.
“It is better to live in a broken house than in a new tent,” he said, urging people to remain in the ruins of their family homes and rebuild.
Across the border in Indian-controlled Kashmir, where more than 1,300 people were killed in the quake, thousands attended a “solidarity prayer” service at the 17th-century Jamia Masjid in Srinagar.
Separatists launched a fund-raising drive and urged New Delhi and Islamabad to grant free passage across the Line of Control (LoC) that divides Kashmir in two.
Women wept openly, while civilians among others emptied their pockets at donation centres.
“The LoC is an evil shackle preventing brothers and sisters of the two Kashmirs from helping each other, and so we demand passage for humanitarian aid to flow freely,” said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chief priest at the Jamia mosque.
India and Pakistan, which have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, have shirked joint rehabilitation and refused to open the LoC to ease the flow of relief material.
In Sri Lanka, minority Muslims across the island offered special “janaza” prayers, appealing for donations to the quake relief effort.
Across Muslim-majority Bangladesh, the faithful packed mosques to recite prayers for the dead, with 10,000 people praying at the national mosque in central Dhaka.
In Muzaffarabad, the imam at the Siddique mosque, Hafez Wasseen Wahid, lamented that many survivors had foregone their prayers altogether in the wake of the disaster.
Not many people were turning up at the mosque and many had abandoned their fasting, he said sadly.
But some residents said they had no choice.
“We don’t have time. We are too busy trying just to survive,” said Noordin Riaz, who lost five members of his family when his house collapsed.
“We also have no water so we can’t cleanse ourselves properly. One can’t just pray — there are rituals involved.”—AFP