The Al Aqsa Mosque in Bolton likes religious violence so much that it has changed its Facebook profile to an image of Mumtaz Qadri.
Qadri is of course the murderer of Salman Taseer, the Pakistani liberal who campaigned against his country’s benighted blasphemy laws. That work was his death warrant. Qadri in turn was executed by Pakistan on Monday.
Scroll down from Qadri at the top of the Facebook account of the Aqsa mosque and you will find a post where “Handsome” is the caption for a photo of Qadri’s face taken at his funeral.
Next comes a video from the funeral. The mosque post calls Qadri a “martyr” (shaheed).
Some scenes from that funeral:
The vast gathering on Tuesday centred on Liaquat Park in Rawalpindi, where a succession of clerics made fiery speeches bitterly condemning the government for giving the go-ahead for Monday’s execution of Qadri, a former police bodyguard who became a hero to many of his countrymen after he shot and killed Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab province, in 2011.
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Some of the all-male crowd wore “I am Qadri” signs around their necks while others held up the front page of the Ummat newspaper for bypassers to kiss, which was entirely covered with a photo of Qadri’s dead and garlanded body.
The man speaking in that funeral video appears to be this man, who was overjoyed when Qadri murdered Saleem in 2011:
Jamaat Ahle Sunnat and other religious organisations took out rallies to “celebrate” the assassination of Governor Salmaan Taseer, marked by aerial firing and tributes to the assassin, Mumtaz Hussain Qadri. Central chief Alami Tanzeem Ahl-e-Sunnat Pir Muhammad Afzal Qadri, who led the rally, declared the assassin a ‘hero of the Muslim world,’ adding the government should not take any action against him.
Declaring Jamaat Ahle Sunnat’s support for the assassin, Afzal Qadri praised him “for killing a blasphemer.”
“We will pursue [Mumtaz Hussain Qadri’s] case in the court,” he said, adding that the media should not call Taseer shaheed (martyr) and should call the assassin Qadri a ghazi (hero).
Another video follows on the Al Aqsa Mosque Facebook account. It shows Mumtaz Qadri beaming in religious song. The mosque notes Qadri “says his farewell before embracing martyrdom”.
Then the mosque links to the foul post of Bradford imam Muhammed Asim Hussain for Qadri the “ghazi” (hero). It is as brazen as it is sickening:
A dark day in the history of Pakistan; the day Ghazi Mumtaz was wrongfully executed and martyred in the way of Allah, when he did what he did in honour of the Prophet.
Allah raise the ranks of this true servant of Allah and lion of the Ahl ul-Sunnah wal Jama’at. Allah guide the leadership in our Muslim countries. Ameen.
Celebrations of horrendous religious murder should have no place of any kind in Britain.
Yet they do in the Al Aqsa Mosque in Bolton, and it is far from alone.
One must presume that nothing will be done about this.