Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan on Thursday once again dismissed claims of the presence of Islamic State – the Middle Eastern terrorist organisation – saying a few troublemakers cannot establish IS in the country by killing a few people.
Addressing a meeting in the capital promoting religious harmony, Kamal said the people of Bangladesh did not like the activities of IS as ‘IS killed our professor,
our policemen, our Hindu priest; tried to slaughter our Christian priest, and tried to gun down our Shia imam’.
‘The brothers of IS, and those who are trying to nourish the ideology of IS, I want to tell you – why this animosity? Why these murders?’ the minister said.
‘Trying to establish the ideology of IS through a few troublemakers murdering a few people will not succeed,’ Asaduzzaman said.
Different religious leaders from Muslim, Hindu, Christian and Buddhist communities attended the meeting at Krishibid Institution Bangladesh in Farmgate.
Police headquarters organised the programme to raise awareness against religious radicalism, while the country passes through a wave of the brutal murders including that of Rajshahi University professor AKM Rezaul Karim Siddique and LGBT activists Xulhaz Mannan and his friend Tonoy, allegedly carried out by Islamist militants.
The country also witnessed murders of six writers, bloggers, publishers and online activists in a series of attacks on free thinkers since February 2015.
The home minister said he understood that
the militants had changed their pattern and strategy of attack.
‘But there is nothing to worry as our police force are combating these incidents successfully and actively,’ he said to countrymen.
Asaduzzaman said the act of IS claiming any incident in the country was just a conspiracy to destabilise the country in its march towards progress.
‘Where is IS here? There is no IS among our ulemas, there is no IS in a single madrassah across the country’, he said.
Addressing the meeting, International Society for Krishna Consciousness’ Bangladesh chapter president Satya Ranjan Barai said the relationship between religious communities has developed cracks since religion has started to become politicised.
Bangladesh Buddhist Kristi Prachar Sangha president Suddhananda Mahathero said there was no disagreement among the different religions in Bangladesh, but some unreligious people were committing acts of militancy and they should be corrected through friendship and love.
Maulana Obaidur Rahman Nakvi said the present crisis did not originate from religion but from lack of harmony in the political arena.
Khatib of Sholakia Eidgah, Farid Uddin Masud, said he had initiated the process to issue a fatwa making militancy a sin, through a signature campaign of one lakh ulemas.
Presiding over the meeting, inspector general of police, AKM Shahidul Hoque, said the police were successful at investigating least 80 per cent of ‘militant-incidents’.
He said the police and ulemas were carrying out a signature campaign of one lakh ulemas ‘to say no to militancy’.
Source: New Age
