Bangladesh turns off Zakir Naik's Peace TV

New Delhi/Dhaka: Bangladesh on Sunday banned the controversial Indian Islamic preacher Zakir Naik’s Peace TV, cracking down on the channel and radical sermons after reports that “provocative” speeches inspired some of the militants who carried out the country’s worst terror attack at a cafe here. The decision to ban the Mumbai-based preacher’s ‘Peace TV Bangla’ was taken during a special meeting of Cabinet Committee on Law and Order, Industry Minister Amir Hossain Amu, who chaired the meeting, said.

In the meeting, attended by senior ministers and top security officials, it was also decided to monitor the sermons given during the Friday prayers to check whether any provocative lectures are delivered, Amu told reporters. Naik’s speeches are believed to have inspired some of the Bangladeshi militants, who killed 22 people, mostly foreigners, at an upscale restaurant in Dhaka on July 1.

“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-a-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. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had earlier in the day called on every school, college and university to “create a list of absent students and publish it”.

Bangladesh has been reeling from dozens of attacks, mainly targeting secular activists or religious minorities. “We will be rigorous,” Hasina said. “We must uproot militancy and terrorism from Bangladesh.” Three of the Dhaka attackers attended top schools and universities in the Bangladeshi capital. The revelation that the attackers were educated, well-off members of society has sparked fears that Islamism has spread far beyond disenfranchised youngsters being radicalised in madrasas.