Zakir Naik: Why India wants to arrest the preacher
May 21, 2017
Indian authorities have accused the popular Mumbai-based preacher Zakir Naik of supporting terrorism, which he denies.
He has 16 million followers on Facebook, 150,000 on Twitter and has given more than 4,000 lectures on Islam across the world. But Zakir Abdul Karim Naik, the popular televangelist and Islamic preacher, is now wanted by the Indian authorities.
Problems arose for the preacher last summer, after Bangladeshi authorities said that one of the gunmen responsible for an attack on a cafe in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, which left 22 people dead, had been inspired by him.
Bangladesh responded by banning Peace TV, an Islamic channel broadcast from Dubai which Naik founded in 2006 and which claims to reach 100 million people worldwide.
The 51-year-old denied supporting violence, releasing a video statement in which he said: “Killing innocent beings is the second major sin in Islam.”
