Prominent Bangladeshi writer Dr Zafar Iqbal was stabbed at a seminar on Saturday 3 March in the northern city of Sylhet in Bangladesh. The attack on Dr Iqbal was the latest in a series of stabbings of secular or atheist authors and bloggers in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. The attacks on secularists, writers, bloggers and activists began in 2013. Radical groups like JMB or Ansarullah Bangla Team had claimed responsibilities for those attacks.
Dr Iqbal, 64, is a best-selling author and speaker at campuses nationwide. He is a faculty member of Computer Science and Engineering department at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST).
Prof Iqbal was the chief guest at the open-air festival of the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department on the university campus and under police escort.
The US-trained professor was in stable condition in hospital with stab wounds to his head. He needed 25 stitches at the hospital in Sylhet and was later airlifted to Dhaka's Combined Military Hospital or CMH in Dhaka.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has visited him there.
Police detained Faizul Hasan, 21, a former Madrasa (Islamic seminary) student, and were investigating any ties to radical groups. Faizul used to work at a computer shop in Sylhet. Police have so far failed to establish any of his political or organisational affiliations. Bangladesh Police chief says the attacker is not influenced by any group; rather he is 'self-radicalised’.
Prof Yasmeen Haque, wife of Prof Muhammed Zafar Iqbal attends a protest against the terrorist attack on Zafar Iqbal in Dhaka in Bangladesh on March 5, 2018. Source: NurPhoto
Colonel Ali Haider Azad Ahmed from the Rapid Action Battalion police unit said Mr Hasan told investigators it was “his duty as a Muslim to resist those who work against Islam”.
“He has said Dr Zafar Iqbal was an enemy of Islam,” Colonel Ahmed said.
Prof Iqbal was among the 15 eminent persons mentioned in Ansar al Islam's hit list recovered by law enforcers in 2017. Another hit list recovered by police in 2016 from a JMB den in Bogra had also contained his name.
Bangladesh’s government has provided security for secular writers and activists since extremists named them in several lists of targets.
The ruling party Bangladesh Awami League and opposition BNP have blamed each other for this heinous attack on Professor Zafar Iqbal.
A CCTV camera of a nearby building captures the moment of the attack on the SUST campus. The video is taken from Bangladeshi online news portal bdnews24.com.
Reactions in Social Media:
Some people blaming ill religious influence and other people defending the true teachings of religion.
