Dubai: Neighboring Muslim country Pakistan is finally opening its door to minority religious sites confirmed PM Imran Khan yesterday.
The Sikh community will no longer have to yearn to visit the religious sites located in the neighboring nation as for this community Mecca and Medina lie in Pakistan, PTI reports.
Pakistan PM Khan was on a one day trip to UAE to attend the 7th edition of the World Government Summit on the invitation of Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum.
“We have the Mecca and Medina of the Sikhs… and we are just opening up those sites for Sikhs,” Khan said at the Summit on Sunday.
He compared the Sikh religious sites with that of Islam’s two holiest sites Mecca and Madina.
Last year in November, PM Khan had laid the foundation stone for the corridor linking Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan’s Kartarpur to Dera Baba Nanak Shrine in India’s Gurdaspur district.
Pakistan’s Kartarpur is believed to be the final resting place of for Guru Nanak the founder of Sikhism.
Addressing the summit he said: “We have opened our visa regime. For the first time in Pakistan, we have 70 countries from where people can come and get visas at the airport.”
Pakistan PM Khan also said that his nation has the best tourist potential even though at the moment it hardly has any tourism along with one of the oldest historical monuments probably as old as anywhere in the world.
“Half the world’s highest peaks are in Pakistan,” he said, adding that the country has 1,000 kilometers of coastline.
“We have Indus Valley Civilisation, which is 5,000 years old. We have Peshawar, the oldest living city in the world, 2,500 years old. Lahore and Multan are ancient cities.
“We have the Gandhara civilisation, which was the cradle of Buddhist civilisation, in the north of Islamabad. The biggest sleeping Buddha, 40 feet, is in Haripur. We have some of the greatest and highest number of Sufi shrines all over Pakistan,” he added.
Pakistan will soon have tourism as PM Khan has stressed on plans to open up for tourism.
India has proposed the corridor to Pakistan 20 years back and finally, Sikh community devotees can visit Pakistan to celebrate the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak.