White Mosque Controversy

Peshawar administration plans to restructure Speen Jumaat amid fear that it may erase an epochal structure   

peshawar: Socio-political circles in Peshawar are teaming up to resist the district administration’s plans to demolish and reshape the city’s iconic Speen Jumaat (White Mosque), located on the road connecting Peshawar with Torkham and onwards with Afghanistan.

The mosque was built in 1950s, on land donated by local tribes residing in the area. During 1960s, it was notified as government property, to be managed by the department of Auqaf and Religious Affairs.

The Peshawar district administration says that parts of the mosque structure are raised over encroached land that need to be cleared in order to ensure easy access to the surrounding health and residential facilities. But its opponents argue that the mosque’s current structure was finalised in 1985, when it was a property of the Auqaf department.

Explaining the reasons behind the government’s plans to reshape Speen Jumaat, Deputy Commissioner Peshawar, Shafiullah Khan, recently told the media that at first glance the mosque doesn’t look like sitting on encroached spaces. But a recent survey conducted jointly by the officials of the Peshawar Development Authority (PDA), the National Highway Authority (NHA), the Pakhtunkhwa Highway Authority (PkHA) and the provincial Department of Revenue, found otherwise.

“We found that the mosque had a 41-foot linear encroachment along its front (along the main Torkham/University Road), and a 30-foot encroachment on the road to the west, that passes between the mosque and the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH),” He said. This, he added, was causing traffic jams, and inconvenience to cummuters as well as the area residents.

Explaining the Auqaf department’s plans, he said the present structure will be razed and a three-storey mosque will be rebuilt with a dedicated underground parking facility that “will help ease the rush on the road for the neighbouring KTH as well as the nearby markets to the east. Similarly, the mosque’s own shops at the front will be replaced with new well-designed shops.”

Speen Jumaat was built in early 1950s on a one kanal (5,445 sq-feet) land donated by the father of Arbab Sikandar Khan Khalil, a leader of the National Awami Party (NAP) and a former governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), then called North-West Frontier Province (NWFP. The mosque went through several phases of extension and reconstruction until 1985, with donations from several notables of the Khalil tribe as well as some businessmen, pharmacy owners and doctors of the KTH.

A Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) leader, Arbab Khizar Hayat, whose grandfather was among the land donors for the mosque, told Bol News that the mosque is located in the heart of the lands owned by the Khalil tribe. As such the tribesmen see it as a symbol of theirs as well as Peshawar’s identity.

“Now the government wants to demolish this historical mosque and rebuild it with a car park in the basement and a shopping mall on the ground floor, while the mosque itself will be moved to the first and second floors and the third floor will house a madrassa.”

As such, he believes, “the real motive behind this whole plan is to make money using the mosque’s property, because the shopping mall will bring millions of rupees in business, out of which a mere two per cent will go to the mosque while the rest would end up in the pockets of the corrupt officials.”

He said last week the Khalil tribe and some religious elders came together to form the Committee to Protect Speen Jumaat. “Apart from holding talks with the government representatives, the committee will also mobilise public support as our cause is not limited to one community.”

Called by the Majlis-e-Ulema-e-Khalil, last week’s meeting was attended by various leaders including a former federal minister and Pakistan Peoples’ Party’s leader, Arbab Alamgir Khan, Jamiat-e Ulema-e-Islam Fazal (JUI-F) leader and former provincial minister, Maulana Amanullah Haqqani, Awami National Party’s (ANP) Arbab Tahir Khan, and many others. The meeting decided to hold a gathering at the mosque on Friday, 18 November.

JUI-F’s Haqqani told Bol News that in his interactions with the deputy commissioner he told him that “the current building was constructed on a map approved by the Auqaf department when General (R) Fazale Haq was the governor of the province. The late governor had removed every inch of encroachment from Peshawar.”

He said he had “clearly told the Deputy Commissioner that we will not allow anyone to replace even a single brick of the mosque, because if we do, it will set a precedent for the government to target other historical mosques in Peshawar.”

Deputy Commissioner Shafiullah Khan acknowledged such reservations, saying that some people had “raised questions on the construction of shops and a parking lot by terming it against the Shariah. We have consulted religious scholars and they see no issue here. We haven’t finalized our plans yet, but I must point out that that there are already shops attached to the mosque and are part of its property.”

Besides, the mosque is donated property transferred to the government under the Auqaf notification and, as such, no one has any right to it anymore, he said. “The imam (prayer leader) of the mosque is appointed by the Auqaf department and gets a salary from the department, which also pays the electricity, water and gas bills. If there are issues as per the shariah, we are happy to sit and talk it out with anyone.”