Alleged links between two prominent Scottish Muslim leaders and a banned sectarian group in Pakistan are to be investigated by police.
Ch Supt Paul Main, the lead officer for safer communities at Police Scotland, made the announcement at an event in Glasgow organised as a show of unity between religious groups in the wake of the killing of Asad Shah.
The fatal stabbing of the much-loved shopkeeper last Thursday sent shockwaves through the multicultural community of Shawlands, a few miles south of the city centre. A 32-year-old from Bradford, Tanveer Ahmed, has been charged with murder, which police have said they are treating as “religiously prejudiced”.
Thursday morning’s event included representatives from Glasgow Central mosque, one of whom described this as “the most difficult week in living memory”, as well as a senior member of Scotland’s Ahmadiyya community, the minority Muslim group to which Shah belonged.
Main was responding to questions about a BBC investigation which revealed that Sabir Ali, the head of religious events at Glasgow Central mosque, was president of Sipah-e-Sahaba (SSP), a militant political party which has accepted responsibility for deadly sectarian attacks against Shia Muslims and Ahmadiyya minorities in Pakistan, and was banned by the Home Office in 2001.
The BBC investigation also linked Hafiz Abdul Hamid from the Polwarth mosque in Edinburgh to the banned group.
Aamer Anwar, one of Scotland’s most outspoken Muslim reformers, who organised the event, noted that the allegations stem from 12 years ago, but added: “There are no excuses for Sipah-e-Sahaba from this platform, this mosque or our community.”
He described SSP as “a Sunni sectarian group of killers who have targeted Shia, Christian and Amadiyya and in fact anyone who opposes their twisted version of Islam.”
Anwar added: “A very small minority of the community may think it’s OK to meddle in the cesspit of violent extremist politics in Pakistan, but we are united in saying that we do not want to import sectarian violence that has caused so much division and so much bloodshed to our community or to our streets.”
However, the president of Glasgow Central mosque, Dr Shafi Kauser, said Ali would remain in post until the central committee could examine the documentation involved in the allegations, which he described as “shocking”.
Throughout the event, representatives of Sunni, Shia, Ahmadiyya and Pakistani Christian communities expressed their horror at the killing of Shah and vowed to stand shoulder to shoulder.
Ahmad Owusu-Konadu, a senior member of the Ahmadiyya community who was sharing a platform with members of Glasgow Central mosque for the first time, called on the police and government to ensure the safety and security of all regardless of their religious beliefs. “Everyone has the right to practise their beliefs without fear.”
Also sharing the platform was Glasgow Central mosque’s imam, Habib ur Rehman, who has been criticised for appearing to praise an extremist executed in Pakistan after murdering a politician.
The imam insisted a series of leaked WhatsApp messages about Mumtaz Qadri, in which he reportedly called the killer a “true Muslim”, had been taken out of context and were about his opposition to Quadri’s hanging and the Pakistani justice system.
Shah, whose final Facebook update, posted a few hours before his death, offered Easter greetings “to my beloved Christian nation”, was a member of the minority Muslim community Ahmadiyya.
The group faces persecution – most recently in Pakistan and Indonesia – and is treated with open hostility by many orthodox Muslims.
In the wake of Shah’s death and the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels and Lahore, Glasgow Central mosque – Scotland’s biggest – is staging an event to encourage unity.
A similar conference was held after the Paris terror attacks in November, where police, community and religious leaders called on Scotland to unite as it was revealed there had been a spike in religious and racially motivated hate crimes in the week after the attacks.
Police Scotland moved to reassure communities shocked by Shah’s death in a letter earlier this week.
