Government ordered to close Peace Schools

MNA National Desk: Bangladesh government has ordered to close all Peace Schools those are operating without any approval across the country. An education ministry statement released on Tuesday said that it has advised the home ministry to take instant actions to close all Peace Schools.

The ministry also ordered the Dhaka Education Board to stop approval of the Peace International School at the capital’s Lalmatia. The government does not have any exact info on how many schools are being functioned with the word ‘Peace’ in their names.

The education board claimed that they only approved temporarily an English medium school at Lalmatia to run under the name Peace School. But the other schools do not have any such authorization.

On 10 July, the government also shut down telecast of Peace TV Bangla, a satellite channel which used to broadcast the speeches of Zakir Naik in Bengali.

Earlier, the Bangladesh government has also said that it would monitor sermons delivered during the Friday prayers. The government would crack down on ‘provocative’ speeches.

Dr. Naik is the founding president of Mumbai-based charity organization, Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), which owns Peace TV. He said in a video response to NDTV after the deadly Dhaka cafe attack, he was not surprised that one of the gunmen knew him since he “inspires millions across the world.”

He has also reportedly claimed that no Bangladesh government official had said that he inspired the act of terrorism.

“Over 50 p.c. of Bangladeshis my fans, there are millions of fans of mine throughout the world. More than 50 per cent Bangladeshis are my fans but to say that I inspired him (the gunman) to kill innocent human beings is devilish,” he said, claiming he was ‘shocked’ to find that four million among the 14 million likes on his Facebook page were by Bangladeshis.

However, the controversial preacher is already banned from entering the United Kingdom and Canada.