A Sunni Prayer-house Sealed in Mashhad

One of the Sunni prayer-houses in Mashhad city was sealed by the personnel of the municipality on Monday 23rd May, 2016.
According to a report of “SunniOnline”, the official website of the Sunni community in Iran, ‘Salman Farsi Prayer-house’ in Tajerabad town of Mashhad was blocked by the pretext of “violation of technical and urbanization regulations”.
According to a member of the prayer-house, there are 400 Sunni families in the town but the prayer-house was sufficient only for less than 50 worshippers. Molawi Abdol-Samad Khani is the imam of the prayer-house.
Talking to “SunniOnline” exclusively, a muqtadi (member) of Salman Farsi prayer-house said, “The personnel of the municipality who were escorted by some security men blocked the worship place of us. It was made 13 years ago for offering prayers in congregation.”
“The prayer-house was very small and only 20 worshipers could offer prayers there. Few weeks ago we contacted the municipality authorities and paid some money to extend its building. Despite taking care of the regulations and official permission, the authorities blocked the prayer-house,” he added.
The Sunni citizen underlined, “We used to only offer prayers in the prayer-house; there was not any other activity. Even Friday and Eid prayers were not offered in the prayer-house.”
The member of the sealed prayer-house told ‘SunniOnline’; “There are two mosques of Sunnis in Tajerabad, but they are away from us. It is regrettable the authorities only seal our place of worship but they have no problem with two illegal houses which are under construction in the same street as well as two ganglands of the drug addicts near the prayer-house.”
It is noteworthy some months ago the imam of Masjid al-Nabi in the same area was arrested while carrying some books of the Sunni schools. ‘Molawi Abdol-Rasheed Abtin’ then was released by the condition to avoid any kind of religious and cultural activities.