‘Talk to Muslims, do justice..’: Jama Masjid Imam requests PM Modi
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New Delhi: As Hindutva forces are trying to create communal division by issuing claims at Muslim mosques in various parts of the country, Shahi Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid Ahmed Bukhari asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speak to the Muslims of the country, in an emotional appeal the PM.
Speaking during the Friday prayers, the Imam said that the PM should do justice to the position he holds. He requested Modi to win the hearts of Muslims by stopping aggressors who are trying to destroy the peace of the country, creating conflict.
He also urged the Muslim youth to remain patient.
The Imam said that the country is now going through a worse situation than it went through in 1947. No one knows where the country is heading, and the PM should intervene immediately to prevent a conflict, he said. He suggested that three people, each from the Muslim and Hindu communities, be invited for a discussion to resolve the issue.
A district court's permission for a survey of the Mughal-era Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh, led to the conflict and five people were killed in police firing. The issues started there when lawyer Vishnu Shankar Jain approached the court, claiming that the Mughal emperor Babur built the mosque by demolishing a Shiva temple.
The ASI said that it had no intention of conducting a survey in Delhi’s Jama Masjid. But the government should seriously think about conducting the survey in Sambhal, Ajmer, and other places. None of those are good for the country, the Imam said.
He warned that a mistake made in a moment will haunt the country for centuries. How long will the country go on like this, how long will the Hindu-Muslim, temple-mosque dispute continue, the Imam wondered.
Recently, a petition was filed in the court placing a claim on the famous Dargah in Ajmer. Following the petition, an Ajmer court has issued notices to the Dargah Committee, the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs and the Archaeological Survey of India in the petition seeking to declare the Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti Dargah as a temple. The next hearing on the petition filed by Vishnu Sharma Gupta is on December 20.