Last Monday, a Pakistani, Mohammed Rayaz, came out of a mosque in which he performed prayers in Edgbaston, where he has long resided in the British city of Birmingham, and walked back to his nearby home. A passer-by like him stopped him on the sidewalk and asked him if he spoke Arabic.
Riaz, 70, replied that he only spoke Gujarati and Urdu. However, the questioner surprised him with something he did not expect: he sprayed him with an unknown substance, set him on fire, then fled the place, leaving him screaming and writhing in pain in the dark of the night, so his son heard his calls for help and rushed to him with members of the family. They took care of his matter, called the police, and called for an ambulance. I took him to a hospital, and his doctors found that the burns included his arms, chest, and face, and it was difficult for him to open his eyes because of the swelling, “but his life is not threatened,” according to the latest medical report on him yesterday evening, Wednesday.
On the next day, that is, Tuesday, the police arrested a suspect, who was reported by local media as a “Sudanese national.” Worshipers besieged him when he arrived to perform prayers in the mosque he used to frequent since late February. He talks to the Pakistani and then sets his jacket on fire. This is a video shown by Al-Arabiya.net as part of a news story it published yesterday, Wednesday, regarding what happened, and it is re-presented above.
What is new regarding al-Mahrouq, a Pakistani, is that he is a retired school principal, and he is described by the residents of the area as “one of the pillars of society” there, and that he used to work on a farm to raise chickens before his retirement, and that he is “respectable and calm to the fullest extent. He has no problems with anyone. He is moderately religious, He appears 5 times in the mosque every day,” and that the police linked the attack on him to a similar incident in the residential neighborhood of Ealing in London, where an 82-year-old was set on fire on February 27.
