Dhaka Terrorist Was Inspired by Zakir Naik - Creator of the Chicago Based "Peace Phone"

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Dr. Zakir Naik

Five weeks ago I reported that the "first Islamic phone" or "Peace Phone," created by Dubai-based Dr. Zakir Naik (also spelled Nayak) was being shipped from Chicago. Naik is an internationally known Muslim writer and speaker. He is also a straight down the line death-to-apostates-and-gays, dhimmi-status-for-all-non-Muslims-and-it's-okay-to-have-sex-with-your-female-slaves sharia supporter who has also made many statements supportive of terrorism. He is banned from the UK, Canada and Malaysia.

Now The Daily Star, Bangladesh's main English paper, lists him as one of three figures that inspired the five Dhaka terrorists. One of the five, Rohan Imtiaz--the well-to-do son of a Bangladeshi politician--posted on Facebook that Naik's words and writings had urged him to become a terrorist.

Two of the five young militants who have slaughtered 20 innocent people Friday night at Holey Artisan Bakery used to follow three controversial Islamists -- Anjem Choudary, Shami Witness and Zakir Nayek. 

Militant killer Nibras Islam, 22, used to follow two alleged suspected recruiters of Islamic State -- Anjem Choudary and Shami Witness -- on Twitter in 2014. 

Another killer Rohan Imtiaz, son of an Awami League leader, propagated on Facebook last year quoting Peace TV’s controversial preacher Zakir Nayek “urging all Muslims to be terrorists”. 

A Pakistan-origin British citizen, 49-year-old Anjem is now facing trial in England for breaking the British anti-terrorism law. Shami Witness is the Twitter name of 24-year-old Mehdi Biswas of Bangalore in India, who is also facing trial for running propaganda for the IS. 

Shami was arrested in December 2014 following an investigation into his Twitter account which was last active in August 2014. Anjem’s twitter account became inactive from August 2015 after terror charges were brought against him. 

Dr Nayek is banned in UK, Canada and Malaysia and is a controversial figure in his home country India. He is wildly popular in Bangladesh through his Peace TV although his preaching often demeans other religions and even other Muslim sects. 

This means at least in the case Nibras and Rohan, they did not become radicalised overnight. They have been consuming radical materials for one to two years before finally disappearing in February-March and reappearing as “IS killers” Friday night at the Holey Artisan Bakery in Gulshan.

A spokesman for Naik's Islamic Research Foundation responded that Dr. Naik has many followers and he cannot be responsible for the actions of all of them.

But where did the young killer get the idea that Naik was "urging all Muslims to be terrorists"?

Three days ago, a Muslim death squad hacked to death twenty innocents at a restaurant in Dhaka. If you want a "Peace Phone" created by the man who inspired at least one of them, you can go to 2140 W. Fulton street in Chicago and buy one. 

"I'm hiding in the toilet with friends, I think we will be killed one by one"

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Tarishi Jain and Faraaz Hossain, two years ago

Among the slain hostages were three students who had been studying in the United States - Tarishi Jain, 19, an Indian studying at UC Berkeley, Faraaz Hossain, a Bangladeshi, about to enter Emory's Goizueta Business School and Abinta Kabir, 18, an American of Bangladeshi parentage who lived in Miami, Florida and was a freshman at Emory.

They were friends.

At some point during the siege, Tarishi Jain's father received a phone call from his daughter who was hiding in the bathroom with the two others. The article from The Times of India does not make it clear when the call was made and thus how long the group had survived in hiding. But at some point she and the others were killed by the terrorists before the restaurant was stormed by police.

Newspaper accounts claim that Jain's body bore the marks of torture. All three probably died by being stabbed and hacked to death with knives.

UPDATE: According Faraaz Hossain's nephew, who claims to have heard this account from one of then freed hostages, the terrorists offered Hossain - who may have appeared less Western or more Muslim - the chance to leave with some of the other Bangladeshis. He chose to stay with his friends.

Yesterday, the #DhakaAttack hashtag on Twitter was partly filled by people complaining that the Dhaka attack and its victims were not getting the same coverage as Orlando a few weeks before. To the extent that that was true, I think it was to some degree understandable. It was understandable for Americans to be focused on something happening to Americans in an American city, just as it's understandable that for the Bangladeshi and Indian public to have been riveted on the Dhaka attack for the last thirty-six hours.

I should add that one of the victims turned out to be American but the State Department announced this quite late and bizarrely did not identify the victim.

Abinta Kabir, outside Holey Artisan Bakery

And of course, there are Muslim terrorist attacks around the world literally every day now. Yesterday, two car bombs, planted by ISIS went off in Baghdad. The first, in a busy market and shopping area, killed over 125 people, many of them children.

My own view is that the statistics matter. It matters how many lost their lives. But just as 9/11 was in part made real for us by the individual pictures of the jumpers or the stories of the desperate phone calls made to loved ones by those trapped in the upper floors, we should, when we can, try not to forget that these "mass casualty" events happened to real human beings. I assume each of us can imagine being one of them. An obvious point, and it can't be made without sounding trite but there it is.

From the The Times of India:

AGRA/FIROZABAD: Sometime before 6 am on Saturday when 19-year-old Tarishi Jain's phone went dead, her father Sanjiv Jain, who had been waiting outside Gulshan Cafe through most of the night after he got to know that heavily armed terrorists had stormed the restaurant in upscale Dhaka and were butchering guests, got a call. 

It was from his daughter, cowering inside a toilet with two of her friends, Faraaz Ayaz Hossain and Abinta Kabir, hiding from the rat-tat-tat of gunfire outside the washroom's door. "Terrorists have entered the restaurant," she told her father, who was planning just a day earlier to bring his wife and two children to Firozabad in UP for a short holiday before Tarishi headed back to the US where she was an Economics undergraduate at the University of California. "I am very afraid and not sure whether I will be able to come out alive. They are killing everyone here."

It had been a long and harrowing night for Sanjiv as he gathered with dozens of anxious family and friends of those huddled in the cafe to know how the bloody strike on innocent and unarmed men and women would end. By the time the terrorists were neutralised, 20 people, mostly foreigners and among them Tarishi - the only Indian among the casualties - had died. 

Tarishi was a recipient of an internship with a Bangladesh bank through the Institute for South Asia Studies at her university in California. 

"After coming to know that Tarishi is among the hostages, we remained glued to our TV set the entire night and remained in touch with Sanjiv (her father) Rakesh Mohan Jain, Tarishi Jain's uncle. "She said, `I'm hiding in the toilet with friends, I think we will be killed one by one'. He was standing outside the cafe the whole time. We were in touch with him throughout," he said. 

Her brother Sanchit, who has done his engineering from Canada, had landed in Delhi a day earlier so that the family of four, along with mother Tulika, could all head to Firozabad — where Sanjiv's three brothers Rakesh, Rajiv and Ajit have a flourishing trade in glass — on Saturday. That family reunion was never to be. At the Jains' Suhag Nagar home in Firozabad, there is both anger and deep grief. "We don't want her to be cremated in the land where she was brutally murdered.

Horror: Dhaka Rescuers Discover 20 Hostages Had Already Been Murdered - Most Hacked to Death

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Outside Holy Artisans Bakery, after the rescue attempt

A few hours ago, the news seemed better. Most or all of the Muslim terrorists had been killed. At least five hostages had been rescued. There were no reports of additional deaths.

However, there was the question of what happened to the presumed other hostages? There were also gruesome photographs released by an ISIS front that showed murdered diners in pools of blood. Many wondered whether it was a fake.

It now appears that most of the hostages had been murdered hours before.

When the Muslim terrorists entered the restaurant they found twenty or so diners - mostly foreigners - and ten to fifteen staff - mostly Bangladeshis.

They asked them to recite versus from the Koran. Those who could not were separated from the others and possibly killed immediately.

Reports indicate they were hacked to death.

The dead included at least nine Italians up to seven Japanese, and two young-women from India and Bangladesh. [It now appears that the latter may have been an American citizen.]

One of the young woman, Tarishi Jain, was studying at UC Berkeley. The other, Abinta Kabir was studying at Emory and lived in Miami, Florida.

Tarishi Jain

Abinta Kabir

At this writing (9:00 PM Bangladeshi time, 10:00 AM CST) most of the other dead have not been identified and there has not been conformation on the numbers. Officials in the countries concerned are presumably holding back until they can contact relatives.

It should be noted that at least two Bangladeshi policeman lost their lives in the firefight immediately following the terrorists storming the restaurant. Many more were injured. A few of the hostages managed to escape. Thirteen were rescued.

It appears that six terrorists were killed and one was taken alive.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack but there are two Bangladeshi groups - one associated with ISIS and one with Al Qaeda - that are also suspected.

Until recently, Bangladesh had been one of the more peaceful and secular Muslim countries, but in the last few years, Muslims assassins have carried out a spate of killings against prominent atheists, Christians and Hindus - often by hacking them to death with knives and machetes in public places

Bangladesh is also in the middle of carrying out another round of war crimes trials against participants in the 1971 genocide carried out by the Pakistani military and Islamist militias against Bengalis and others.

UPDATE (10:30 AM CST): a second Emory University student, Faraaz Hossain, has been confirmed among the dead.

UPDATE (11:30 AM CST): The State Department announced that an American citizen was killed. It is unclear if they were referring to Abinta Kabir.

Faraaz Hossain

BREAKING: Dhaka Police are Currently Storming Cafe to Rescue Hostages; ISIS Releases Pictures of Murdered Diners

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[UPDATE: 8:50 AM Bangladeshi time. CNN reports: "all gunfire has stopped."] 

Six to ten Muslim gunman attacked the neighboring restaurants Holey Artisans Bakery and O'Kitchen, both popular with expats and foreigners, in Dahka's diplomatic district at 9:20 PM local time, They took at least twenty hostages--many of them foreigners, including a number of Italians--threw bombs and traded gunfire with police, killing at least two officers and injuring scores of others. Additional unconfirmed deaths were reported.

An few hours ago ISIS released the above picture, claiming that over twenty people had already been killed.

After a siege lasting more than ten hours, eyewitnesses and local news outlets are reporting that police are now storming the premises.