Four MHA staff suspended for renewing Zakir’s funding licence
A red-faced Union home ministry suspended four officials after it found that the foreign funding licence of controversial TV preacher Zakir Naik’s NGO Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) was renewed despite an adverse legal opinion against it.
Solicitor General of India had said a few weeks back the IRF can be declared unlawful association under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
The clean chit for IRF comes even as the government is deliberating on the opinion and gathering more evidence in support of its case to declare Naik’s NGO unlawful. Once declared unlawful it won’t be able to collect donation and enlist members. Its assets can also be attached.
Despite an adverse opinion, the ministry renewed the license of IRF under Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, the law that governs foreign funding of NGOs, just last week.
Naik is under renewed scanner after it was alleged that few of gunmen who attacked a bakery in Dhaka were influenced by his sermons.
Naik, in his lecture aired on Peace TV, an international Islamic channel, had reportedly “urged all Muslims to be terrorists”.
Naik is banned in the UK and Canada for his hate speech aimed against other religions. He is among 16 banned Islamic scholars in Malaysia.