A senior member of Pakistan’s Markazi Jamiat Ahl-e Hadis and a close associate of that country’s Jamaat ud Dawa chief Hafeez Sayeed on Monday (October 27) left for Chapainawabganj district on the India-Bangladesh border after arriving in Dhaka on October 25.
The sudden visit of Markazi Jamiat Ahl-e Hadis ‘senior scholar’ Ibtisam Elahi Zaheer two days ago took Bangladesh’s intelligence and security agencies by surprise, Northeast News has learnt. He is the General Secretary of the Markazi Jamiat Ahl-e Hadis.
However, security officials soon picked up Zaheer’s trail, which indicated that he was received close to the aircraft from which he alighted at Rajshahi’s Shah Maqdoom Airport on October 25 evening by one Abdur Rahim bin Abdur Razzak, a member of the Al Jamia As Salifa, an Islamic research foundation linked to the Bangladesh arm of the country’s Ahl-e Hadis Aandolan.
Abdullah bin Abdur Razzak is the son of Sheikh Abdur Razzak bin Yusuf, who is Chairman of Al Jamia As Salifa. He escorted the Pakistani visitor to the organisation’s campus at Naudapara in Rajshahi city.
Northeast News has learnt that this is Zaheer’s second visit to Bangladesh since August 8, 2024, when the Mohammad Yunus-led interim regime took charge following the fall of the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League regime.
This morning, Zaheer, accompanied by Sheikh Abdur Razzak bin Yusuf, left Naudapara for Chapainawabganj, where he is scheduled to visit a few areas on the India-Bangladesh border, including Nachole, and hold meetings at some local mosques. Bangladeshi sources said that Zaheer is expected to hold meetings with Asadullah al Ghalib, Chairman of the Ahl-e Hadis Andolan Bangladesh.
Between November 29 and 31, Zaheer will visit various locations along the India-Bangladesh border in Rangpur, Lalmonirhat and Nilphamari – the very areas which a joint team of Indian Military Intelligence and senior Bangladesh Army officers, including General Waker-uz-Zaman, visited (by helicopter) on October 16.
Zaheer will be in Joypurhat on November 1 and Nagaon on November 2 before addressing a large Salafi conference at Dangipara in Rajshahi’s Paba upazila on November 6 and 7.
The sources said that Zaheer, who will return to Pakistan on November 8, had in July 2024 called on Muslims in 2012 to kill apostates who denounce Islam and had said that Jews and Christians “cannot be our friends”. Four UK-based mosques were closely assessed by the UK’s Charity Commission for hosting Zaheer, who, sections of the British media reported, condoned “sexual slavery”.
The UK-based charitable organisations which hosted Zaheer were the Umm Ul Qura Foundation, which runs a mosque in Bradford and was endorsed by the Pakistani cleric, Al Hikmah Project, which runs a mosque in Keighley, the Makki Masjid in Manchester and the Markazi Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith UK, an umbrella group based in Birmingham with over 45 mosques and other organisations that are affiliated with it. There were demands for Zaheer to be banned from entering Britain for the sake of public safety.
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Instagram posts show that in October 2014, Zaheer met with fugitive Islamic scholar and orator Zakir Abdul Karim Naik, who is the founder and president of the Islamic Research Foundation and Peace TV. Naik is scheduled to visit India and deliver sermons between late November and the third week of December 2025. Naik is scheduled to visit Bangladesh in November this year and is expected to go on a tour of the country to deliver sermons.
