In Baila village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district, almost everyone remembers Qari Mohammad Iqbal for two things – for being a Hafiz-e-Quran, someone who has memorised the entire Quran, and his soft-spoken, calm demeanour.
“He was a very patient person. Even if someone was harsh or rude to him, he would talk politely,” said Chirag Din, a relative from Baila. “He would never argue or fight with anyone.”
The head of the Jamia Zia-Ul-Uloom seminary in Poonch city where Iqbal worked for over two decades agreed. “He would never talk back even if I reprimanded him,” said Maulana Sayeed Ahmed Habib. “For him, everything revolved around his duty as a teacher.”
The 47-year-old, who spent his life memorising the Quran or helping others learn it by heart, died doing his duty as a teacher. In the early hours of May 7, Iqbal was at the seminary when he was hit by splinters of a shell that was fired on Poonch city by the Pakistan army.
But the denigration that followed his death shocked all those who knew him. In the coverage following the four-day conflict between India and Pakistan over the Pahalgam terror attack, several news channels in Delhi and the National Capital Region labelled Iqbal a “Pakistani terrorist” who had been “neutralised” during the Indian military strikes in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. They also used his picture in their broadcast.
“It was like rubbing salt on our wounds,” said one of the residents of Baila, asking not to be identified. “How can the media label such a humble and pious human being as a terrorist?”
Though Poonch police immediately rebutted the claims of the news channels and issued a statement asserting that Qari Iqbal was a “respected religious figure in the local community and had no affiliation with any terror outfit”, they did not register a case against the news channels, as the family had demanded.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.
