New Delhi: The Indian government plans to check and penalize broadcasting of unlicensed television channels after reports linked terror attacks in Bangladesh to a controversial Islamic preacher.
The government has ordered the scrutiny of the televised and online sermons of Dr Zakir Naik.
Naik’s Peace TV that broadcasts out of Dubai is banned in India. However some cable TV operators reportedly download the content and then air it for subscribers. 24 channels, 11 of them Pakistani, are illicitly made available in different parts of India, said sources in the Intelligence Bureau, underscoring that they have been flagging this content as dangerous propaganda in recent years.
Some sermons are also available on platforms such as YouTube who have been asked to remove them quickly, said sources.
The Bangladesh government has said that Naik’s speeches inspired some of the seven young men who burst into a Dhaka cafe and hacked foreigners to death, ndtv.com reported.
Naik, who has been in Mecca on a religious trip this week, has in a WhatsApp-ed video statement said he cannot be blamed for the terror strike.
But the Indian government has top investigators reviewing speeches of his CDs to determine if he tacitly or otherwise urged acts of terror. The 50-year-old televangelist is banned from entering the UK and Canada.
Information and Broadcasting Minister Venkaiah Naidu on July 8 met with top officers from his own department along with members of the Home Ministry and intelligence agencies. It was decided that committees in different regions will “monitor and stop unauthorized channels” in every district. They will be empowered to stop the telecast of this content.
“The equipment of those airing the content will be seized,” said Junior Broadcasting Minister Rajavardhan Rathore.
Separately, the Maharashtra government is looking not just at Dr Naik’s speeches but at his writings as well as the sources of funds for his Islamic Research Foundation, which describes itself as a non-profitable organization.
In the WhatsApp-ed video distributed by his organization, Naik claims that though he is wildly popular in Bangladesh – “more than 90 percent Bangladeshis know me, more than 50 percent are my fans,” he says in the video. “I disagree that I inspired this act of killing innocent people,” he adds.
Naik, who was born in Mumbai on October 18, 1965) is an Islamic preacher, who claims to be an “authority on comparative religion.” The world’s “leading Salafi evangelist” is the founder president of the Islamic Research Foundation. Through his Peace TV channel he reaches a reported 100 million viewers. Unlike many Islamic preachers, his lectures are colloquial, given in English, not Urdu or Arabic, and he wears a suit and tie rather than traditional garb.
Before becoming a public speaker, he trained as a medical doctor.
Naik said in 2006, that he was inspired by Ahmed Deedat, an Islamic preacher, whom he met in 1987.