Govt will scan Zakir Naik’s speeches, books and videos

Union home minister Rajnath Singh has asked the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and National Investigation Agency (NIA) to examine if Islamic preacher Zakir Naik’s speeches, books and videos have incited or radicalised Muslim youth towards religious fundamentalism.

Updated on: Jul 14, 2016, 01:17:08 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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Union home minister Rajnath Singh has asked the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and National Investigation Agency (NIA) to examine if Islamic preacher Zakir Naik’s speeches, books and videos have incited or radicalised Muslim youth towards religious fundamentalism.

Bangladesh has banned his Peace TV, saying it incited the attack on a Dhaka café in which 22 people were gunned down. (HT Photo)

The Mumbai-based 50-year-old televangelist, currently touring Qatar after spending time in Saudi Arabia, has been under the lens over allegations that his sermons influenced some of the terrorists killed in the July 1 Dhaka siege. Bangladesh has banned his Peace TV, saying it incited the attack on a Dhaka café in which 22 people were gunned down.

Officials of India’s anti-terrorism agency, NIA, and the IB have started sifting through Naik’s speeches and videos, examining his sermons and literature in the light of Supreme Court judgments on freedom of speech.

Law-enforcement agencies are looking if he had overstepped his right to speak without restraint and incited people, which will allow them to build a watertight case against him. “Any further action on Naik will depend on whether there is a case made out against him and will it stand judicial scrutiny,” a senior official said.

Government sources said home minister Singh decided last Friday to get Naik’s speeches examined after a number of arrested sympathisers of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group as well as the banned Indian Mujahideen outfit were alleged followers of the preacher.

Mumbai police had registered a case of incitement against Naik three years ago.

According to the home ministry, suspected IS recruit Arif Majeed of Kalyan, Burdwan-based Shah Noor Alam, who is allegedly loyal to the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, Muttabir Mohammed Sheikh of Mumbai, who is the so-called IS emir of Jund-e-Khalifa, and members of a busted IS module in Hyderabad have confessed during interrogation to be Naik’s followers.

Arrested Indian Mujahideen operative Tehseen Akhtar alias Monu, the son of a chemist in Bihar’s Samastipur, had allegedly told interrogators that he used to visit a library in Darbhanga to read Naik’s books.

A top bomb-maker, Akhtar targeted the October 27, 2013, election rally of Narendra Modi in the run-up to next year’s Lok Sabha elections. He is an accused in a string of bombings — 2010 in Varanasi, 2011 in Mumbai, 2012 in Pune and 2013 in Dilsukhnagar, Hyderabad.

The Modi government is worried about radicalisation of Muslim youngsters after seven youth allegedly operating under the banner of Jund-e-Khalifa-fi-Bilad Al Hindi, or Warriors of Caliphate in India, were arrested in Hyderabad.

About 44 Indians have been arrested by the NIA for links with the IS, with no less than 23 from southern India. Besides, four youth from Kerala have been suspected to have joined the IS in Syria while another 17 were missing since May this year.

“The IS radicalisation issue is a matter of concern as a large number of those arrested have been in touch with Bhatkal-born Shafi Armar, who calls himself Yousuf al-Hindi. Nearly `25 lakh has reached IS sympathisers through the hawala route with the intention of launching attacks in India,” said a counter-terrorism expert.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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