Mumbai preacher Zakir Naik, Bengaluru IS blogger inspired Dhaka killers
MUMBAI/BENGALURU: Mumbai-based Islamic preacher Zakir Naik is in the spotlight after revelations that two of the mass killers in Dhaka – Nibras Islam and Rohan Imtiaz – were inspired by him and Bengaluru-based Islamic State propagandist Mehdi Masroor Biswas, currently in prison.
Of the two, Naik, 50, a doctor, had courted controversy when he had refused to describe Osama bin Laden as a terrorist and, answering a question about why he was banned from entering Britain, had said it was because he exhorts all Muslims to be terrorists.
“I tell Muslims that every Muslim should be a terrorist. Terrorist means a person who terrorises. When a robber sees a policeman, he is terrified. So for a robber, a policeman is a terrorist. So in this context every Muslim should be a terrorist to the robber,” Naik had told reporters at a press conference in Mumbai in 2010.
Currently away in Saudi Arabia for ‘umrah’ (mini Haj), Naik is hugely popular in Bangladesh through his Peace TV rants.Apart from Britain, Naik is also banned from entering Canada and Malaysia for his peddling Salafist Islam, a transnational religious-political ideology based on a belief in “physical” jihadism.
Mehdi Masroor Biswas, who advocated IS through his Twitter handle @ShamiWitness, had numerous followers at the time of his arrest in December 2014. The police had said in the chargesheet that his Twitter handle had revealed that he had been tweeting details of border crossings in Syria to those on their way to enlist as IS fighters. Several blogs and online publications on jihad used information from his handle, which was considered “trustworthy”. The other inspiration for the Dhaka terrorists was Pakistan-origin British citizen Anjem Choudary , 49, facing trial in England for breaking antiterrorism law. While Holey killer Nibras Islam used to follow Choudary and Biswas on Twitter in 2014, the other terrorist, Rohan Imtiaz, posted Naik’s “urging all Muslims to be terrorists” on his Facebook wall.
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