Top Bangladesh sci-fi writer stabbed in head at seminar because he’s an ‘enemy of Islam’
Zafar Iqbal, a top selling author and celebrity speaker, was rushed to hospital after the attack
Bangladeshi investigators said Sunday that a young man accused of stabbing a bestselling science fiction writer at a seminar had targeted him as “an enemy of Islam”.
Saturday’s attack on Zafar Iqbal in the northern city of Sylhet was just the latest in a series of stabbings of secular or atheist authors and bloggers in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
Iqbal, a long-standing champion of free speech and secularism, remains in stable condition in hospital where he is being treated for stab wounds to his head.
Police detained 21-year-old Faizul Hasan, a former Islamic seminary student, and were investigating any ties to radical groups.
Colonel Ali Haider Azad Ahmed from the Rapid Action Battalion police unit said 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,” Ahmed said.
Police said Hasan, whose father was a teacher at an Islamic seminary, may have had links to extremists blamed for attacks on secular and atheist writers in the last four years.