ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi on Saturday announced that neither the state machinery nor clerics would stop citizens from visiting mosques as almost all demands of clerics related to holding of Friday, Tara­weeh and daily congregational prayers were accepted with the condition of social distancing and other precautionary measures.

To avoid overcrowding at mosques, it was decided that people would be encouraged to observe “aitekaf” at home while sehri and iftar would not be arranged at mosques.

The decisions were taken at a national-level conference, which was attended by clerics belonging to Barelvi, Deobandi, Shia and Ahle Hadith sects as well as chief secretaries of the four provinces, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltis­tan through video link.

The conference was called at Aiwan-i-Sadr to build consensus and devise a plan for congregational prayers and Taraweeh during Ramazan amid tensions between the government and clerics over the ban on public gatherings to contain spread of the coronavirus.

The ulema and the state agreed upon a 20-point action plan at the conference.

The clerics accepted to implement the precautionary measures in mosques to stop local transmission of coronavirus but declined to take any responsibility related to the enforcement of measures.

The two main concerns that the ulema shared with Minister for Religious Affairs Pir Noorul Haq Qadri were about closure of mosques and a major shift of donations, including zakat, from religious seminaries and mosques towards philanthropy.

The minister assured the clerics that the government had no plan to scale down religious institutions and that their concerns would be addressed.

While addressing a pre­sser after the conference, Pre­sident Alvi said: “Nobody wants to lock down the mosques, not a single person or any provincial gov­ernment talked about lockdown of mosques or not holding Taraweeh prayers, therefore it is inessential debate.”

He announced that donations, including alms, “khairaat, sadqaat and zakat”, was the right of mosques and seminaries. He said: “I appeal to the people not to reduce their funding to these Islamic institutions in Ramazan.”