Will the Islamophobia never end? “Religious intolerance: Hindu temple vandalised in Peshawar,” by Riaz Ahmad for the Express Tribune, May 21:
PESHAWAR: In a brazen act of vandalism, unidentified men sneaked into a Hindu temple in the capital city of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on Sunday, smashed a holy figurine and burnt down scriptures and images of deities.
“We opened the temple around 6pm and found all holy scriptures and images burnt down. A statuette of Lord Shiva was also smashed to pieces,” Ramesh Lal, a priest at Guru Gorakhnath temple, told The Express Tribune.
The temple is situated in the Gorgathri neighbourhood inside the walled city.
Peshawar, which is believed to be one of the oldest living cities of South Asia, houses dozens of monuments and structures from the Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh and British eras.
The priest said that the community had reported the incident to the local police who gave them the customary cold-shoulder.
“Vandals smashed a statuette of Lord Shiva to pieces and burnt down the holy Gita as well as several images of our deities,” Lal said. The temple, according to him, did not have armed guards because the government pays scant attention to the security needs of a Hindu place of worship….
No group has claimed responsibility for the vandalism — but past attacks on the shrines of Muslim Sufi saints and spiritual figures have been blamed on Taliban insurgents.
You don’t say.