Zakir Naik charged with inciting youths to join IS

PETALING JAYA: India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) has charged controversial preacher Zakir Naik with heading an “unlawful association” and inciting youths to commit acts of terror and join global outfits such as the Islamic State (IS).

The Times of India (TOI) reported the NIA as saying that Naik had “deliberately insulted” the religious beliefs of Hindus, Christians and Islamic sects like Shia, Sufi and Barelvi.

It also said Naik’s speeches had influenced recruits to the IS cause.

Naik’s NGO, the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), and a firm called Harmony Media Pvt Ltd were named as co-accused in the charge sheet sighted by TOI, the report said.

The IRF, which was banned by the Indian government in 2016, was said to have conspired with Naik to promote enmity and hatred between different religious groups, and to insult different religions and Islamic sects that did not subscribe to Wahhabism.

According to the charge sheet, Naik had delivered over 1,500 public lectures and talks in India and abroad since 1994.

The speeches in which he was accused of insulting the beliefs of others were in the form of CDs, DVDs and television programmes which IRF and Harmony Media were “instrumental” in circulating, the NIA was quoted as saying.

Naik is wanted for questioning in India over money-laundering and terrorism-related crimes. He fled India in 2016, after a suspect in a terror attack on a Dhaka cafe in Bangladesh said he had been influenced by Naik’s speeches, and Bangladesh banned his Peace TV channel.

In May, the NIA wrote to Interpol, asking that a red-corner notice be issued against him. This would mean that he would be officially declared an international fugitive, and police in any country would be authorised to arrest him.

However, Naik contested the request, telling Interpol in a letter that the Indian agencies were unfairly targeting him because he was a Muslim.

He was also reported as claiming that his speeches had only promoted peace, and that he had never advocated terror or jihad.

He said he had been delivering talks on Islam for the past 25 years across several countries, where he was respected and welcomed.

However, the NIA said in its charge sheet that Naik “was not considered an Islamic scholar”, adding that “his knowledge of Islam was very poor”.

Naik was the subject of controversy in Malaysia earlier this year when Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi announced that the Islamic preacher had permanent resident (PR) status.

This followed reports by the Hindustan Times last November which said Naik had been given Malaysian citizenship.

The NIA’s charge sheet against Naik quoted a witness named Noor Mohammad, who told the agency that he had been influenced by the preacher’s talks at “peace conferences” organised by the IRF in 2007 and 2008.

Noor Mohammad had initially aborted his plans to join the IS in Syria, but was later motivated by an accused in the Malad-Malwani IS module case who quoted Naik as saying that suicide bombing was permissible in Islam, the report said.

“Since he considered A-1 (Naik) an authority over Islamic viewpoint, he readily agreed to join the IS to fight jihad for them,” the charge sheet read.

The NIA also cited another case in which Arshi Asif Qureshi, an associate of Naik and an IRF employee, was arrested in July last year for forcibly converting two individuals to Islam and recruiting them for the IS.

In a third case cited in the charge sheet, the NIA named Abu Anas, who is also listed in a separate charge sheet for an “IS conspiracy case” investigated by the agency in 2015.

Anas was said to be part of a conspiracy by an IS-affiliated group to recruit Muslims from India to work for the organisation.

He had also reportedly received a scholarship from the IRF between 2013 and 2015. -FMT