Image doctors to rebrand Lal Masjid

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's Lal Masjid, whose radical clerics and students were involved in a bloody stand-off with the government, is all set to wear a brand new look -- with a new name, a moderate cleric heading it and its colour refurbished in green instead of its namesake red.

Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao has approved a Rs 13 million plan to renovate and remodel the mosque complex, which was badly damaged during the eight-day battle between troops and Islamic radicals holed up inside it, in an effort to erase the memory of its bloody past.

When the mosque is re-opened for prayers in the first week of August, worshipers will find it bathed in apple green colour and perhaps with a new name, Dawn newspaper reported.
"We are changing the red colour of the mosque to dilute its bloody memory," an official said, according to the report.

The sprawling mosque complex in central Islamabad is one of the rare mosques to have a name not connected with Islam.

The red colour is usually shunned by radical Islamists because it is synonymous with communists or atheists whom they regard as "Kafirs," meaning infidels.
True to its name it remained a centre of defiance ever since it was constructed in 1965 even though it was managed by the government.

Ghazi's father Abdullah was appointed as its "Khateeb" (cleric) by the first military ruler Ayub Khan and later nourished by another dictator, Zia ul Haq during whose time the Lal Masjid became a centre of pro-Taliban and al Qaeda militancy.

After its renovation, the mosque will be handed over to the Auqaf Department which will appoint a new cleric for it.