All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) member Zafaryab Jilani on December 23 said that the mosque which is planned to build in Ayodhya following last year’s Supreme Court verdict was against the Waqf Act and “illegal” under the Shariat laws.
Athar Hussain, the secretary of a trust formed to build the mosque in Ayodhya, however, said everyone interprets the Sharia in their own way and when the land has been allotted under the directive of the Supreme Court, it cannot be illegal.
The blueprint of the mosque and a hospital to be built on a five-acre land in Ayodhya’s Dhannipur village was unveiled on Saturday at the Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation (IICF) office in Lucknow. The IICF has been formed by the Uttar Pradesh state Sunni Central Waqf Board to construct the mosque and other utilities on the plot.
“According to the Waqf Act, mosques or land of mosques cannot be bartered. The proposed mosque in Ayodhya violates the Act. It violates the Sharia law as the Waqf Act is based on the Sharia,” said Zafaryab Jilani, convenor of the Babri Masjid Action Committee.
SQR Ilyas executive member of AIMPLB said, “We have rejected the proposal to accept land for the mosque at any other place. We lost the title suit and so we don’t need a land for a mosque.”
“The Muslims have, however, rejected this land at Dhannipur given in compensation. The mosque being built by the trust constituted by the Sunni Central Waqf Board is just a symbolic one,” he said.
The issue was raised by Asaduddin Owaisi at a meeting of the AIMPLB’s executive committee held on October 13. All the members were of the view that the exchange of land for the mosque was not permissible under the Waqf Act and in turn “illegal” under the Sharia law. “
“The power for interpretation of Shariya does not lie in the hands of some limited people. The mosque is the place for offering namaz. So what is wrong if we are building a mosque?” posed Hussain.
It is to be noted that after the Sri Ram Mandir verdict of November 9, the Supreme Court directed the Centre to allot an alternative five-acre plot to the Sunni Waqf Board for building a new mosque at a “prominent” place in the holy town in Uttar Pradesh.
