MARGAO
The Managing Committee of the Jamia Masjid, Canacona has said that the committee had asked for the Julus procession with the authorities, but were denied the permission under one pretext or the other.
The committee members further pointed out that they have absolutely no role to play over the absence of the weekly Canacona market, saying the vendors might not have come for the market fearing trouble from some miscreants.
Addressing the media, Masjid president Ilhyas Ayub Khan told the media that the committee had applied the permission for Julus procession, but have been denied the same by the authorities. “Since we had no permission, we did not take out the Julus procession. But, now they say that Muslims should not wear burqa and topis. They have also said many things about our business,” he said.
He added: “We would like to tell the people of Goa that we are not migrants, who have come down and settled in Canacona only recently. We have with us documents of the Portuguese era that shows that we have been staying in the taluka for over 300 hundred years. We are a small community staying in Canacona. We had never brought people from outside Canacona or from Karnataka for the Julus procession.”
