Bangladesh imposes ban on Zakir Naik’s Peace TV

Bangladesh on Sunday ordered a ban on broadcasts by controversial Mumbai-based preacher Zakir Naik’s Peace TV channel after reports that his “provocative” speeches had inspired some of the terrorists behind the country’s worst terror attack in an upscale Dhaka restaurant on July 1 that killed at least 28 people.

The decision to ban Peace TV Bangla was taken at a special meeting of the Cabinet committee on law and order that was chaired by industry minister Amir Hossain Amu and attended, besides senior ministers, by the chief of police, head of the elite Rapid Action Battalion, paramilitary border guards and top officials of different security agencies.

The country’s information and broadcasting ministry will issue an administrative direction on Monday banning the channel.

One of the slain attackers of the July 1 terrorist attack, 22-year-old Rohan Imtiaz, quoted Naik in a Facebook post in January this year where he urged “all Muslims to be terrorists”.

Britain and Canada have banned Zakir Naik from visiting the two countries several years ago, while Malaysia banned his lectures fearing that they could instigate inter-racial tensions.

Bangladesh home minister Asaduzzaman Khan had on Saturday said that its intelligence agencies were probing Naik.

“He is on our security scanner... Our intelligence agencies are investigating his activities as his lectures appeared provocative,” Mr Khan had told PTI, adding that Naik’s financial transactions in Bangladesh were also being probed.

At the meeting, it was also decided to monitor sermons given during Friday prayers to check if any provocative lectures were delivered and to also issue a clarion call to imams to preach sermons against terrorism.

“The ministry handling religious affairs will issue an advisory to imams of the country’s 300,000 masjids to come out positively in line with real Islamic ideology and denounce terrorism and extremism. We have also requested one lakh imams who are signatories against terrorism to come out openly and organise a gathering to voice their protests,” Bangladesh’s I&B minister Hasanul Haq Inu, who also attended the meeting, told this newspaper over the phone from Dhaka.

“We will also soon issue directives to all universities to scan their records and seriously look into the matter of missing students vis-à-vis terrorism,” he added, underlining the concern the “missing” students were generating in the country.

Another major decision taken at the high-level meeting was to set up anti-terror committees at the grassroots level. “Within 10 days, anti-terror committees comprising community policemen, civilians, political representatives, etc will come up at the police thana levels all across Bangladesh,” Mr Inu said.

At the meeting, police records were presented wherein it was revealed that of 37 cases of attacks on bloggers, the culprits in 14 cases had already been chargesheeted while the probe was in progress in the other cases.