Share this story!            

Only registered centres to collect sacrificial animals’ skins

By Adnan Lodhi

LAHORE: With the arrival of Eidul Azha, the race among madrassas to collect animal hides is at its peak, as they have put up banners across the city, requesting citizens to donate hides to their respective organisations.

Apart from madrassas, representatives and workers of different non-government organizations and hospitals are also vying to collect sacrificial animals’ hides and are running advertisement campaigns through banners and posters. The religious organisations have also started an advertisement campaign through mobile text messages. Traditionally, the people donate the hides of sacrificial animal to the poor or the nearest mosques. However, mosques and madrassa authorities assign their students to collect animal hides. The madrassas whose students collect thousands of animal hides every year include Minhaj-ul-Quran, Jamia Ashrafia, Jamiatul Muntazir, Jamia Nazamia, Jamia Hizbulahnas, Jamia Qaadsia, Jamia Abu Huraria. Apart from these madrassas, workers of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Dawat-e-Islami are also actively campaigning to collect animal skins. The students of these madrassas and mosques are very keen to collect the highest number of hides. This year also, they have taken it upon themselves to request every citizen personally and go from door to door to ask citizens to donate animal hides.

Sheikh Arshad, a Model Town resident said that the citizens do not ask these students as to what they intend to do with the skins and simply hand them over. Therefore, he added the government should monitor as to where these skins actually go because the representatives of these madrasssas earn millions of rupees from them. He said that in the past, jihadi organisations had been collecting sacrificial animals’ hides to generate funds for their activities. Khalid Khan, another citizen said that although the citizens should help the poor by donating animal hides, the government should set up centers to collect animal hides and ensure that the funds generated from their sales are properly utilised. Muhammad Shafiq, an animal hide dealer told that they normally purchase skins from madrassas and mosques, adding that they pay up to Rs300 to Rs400 for goatskins and around Rs4000 for the hides of larger animals.

Collective sacrifice: Abdul Qayyum Naemi, a student of Jamia Naimia told Daily Times that the concept of collective sacrifice was very good. He said that collective sacrifice made it easy for them to collect skins. Media Adviser of Minhaj-ul-Quran Abdul Hafeez Chaudhry told Daily Times that a 2,000-member team of their youth league would collect animal skins from across Pakistan. He said that 300 skin camps were set up in Lahore alone. He added that their representatives had also been instructed to collect animal skins at the district, tehsil, town and mohalla levels. “We were aiming to collect around 0.2 million skins this year”.

Home | Lahore

Share this story!