Islamist Zakir Naik was not invited to FIFA World Cup inauguration: Qatar
India made it very clear to Qatar that the visit of Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar for World Cup inauguration on November 20 would be called off if Doha had extended an invitation to Islamic fundamentalist Naik to attend the opening ceremony.
Qatar has informed India through diplomatic channels that no official invitation was extended to Indian fugitive and Islamist Zakir Naik to attend the November 20, 2022 opening of the FIFA World Cup In Doha and claimed that deliberate “disinformation” was being spread by third countries to spoil India-Qatar bilateral relations.
Malaysia based Zakir Naik is a radical Islam preacher with dubious fund raising links and charges of proselytization. He is wanted in India since 2016
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The formal communique from Qatar came after the Modi Government clearly told Doha that New Delhi would be forced to call off the visit of Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar to attend the FIFA World Cup inauguration if Doha had formally invited Islamist Zakir Naik to watch the grand opening of soccer event from VVIP box. Vice President Dhankar attended the event on November 20 and departed from Qatar the next day but not before meeting Indian expat blue-collar workers who had built soccer stadiums for the West Asian country.
While Zakir Naik, a radical Muslim who is wanted by Indian authorities since 2016 for alleged money laundering and inciting extremism through hate speeches, was nowhere to be seen around the FIFA stadium, he is known to travel to Qatar from his refuge in Malaysia. In March 2022, the Union Home Ministry declared Naik founded Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) an unlawful association under the UAPA and banned it for five years. India has also sent a request to Malaysia for his extradition as he is said to have had a role in Delhi 2020 riots. Currently, India is pursuing a Red Corner Notice against Naik by the Interpol. He is banned in the UK and Canada for his hate speeches and is among the 16 banned Islamists in Malaysia.
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Although Qatar authorities said that Zakir Naik could be on a private visit to Doha but till now there has been no positive sighting of the Islamist.
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Although Qatar authorities said that Zakir Naik could be on a private visit to Doha but till now there has been no positive sighting of the Islamist.
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It is understood that the Qatar government told the Indian interlocutors that the entire Zakir Naik controversy was engineered by third countries and as a part of a larger disinformation campaign against Qatar.
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.
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Home/World News/Islamist Zakir Naik was not invited to FIFA World Cup inauguration: Qatar
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