Pakistan using its ties in Turkey, Qatar to arrange funding for Zakir Naik

India's most wanted fugitive and controversial Islamic preacher, Zakir Naik, is consistently receiving funding from Gulf countries. Indian agencies have been pursuing Naik on charges of alleged money laundering and delivering hate speeches. He has been residing in Malaysia ever since leaving India and despite India’s persistent efforts, Malaysia is reluctant to hand Naik back to law enforcement authorities here.

Sources close to these developments revealed that recently, Zakir Naik had contacted one of his old contacts in Qatar and requested an amount of  $500,000 for his charity organisations. Pakistan is also using its relations with countries like Turkey and Qatar to provide funding to Zakir Naik. It is to be noted that Pakistan maintains good relations with Qatar and Turkey.

In the last few years, the relationship between Qatar and Turkey has been strong and Turkey has been using its influence on Qatar to take on an anti-India stand.

India’s relationship with Turkey has been declining ever since Turkey backed Pakistan at the FATF and also expressed support for Pakistan's position on Kashmir. Since the abrogation of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir, Turkey has been raising Kashmir's issues at various international forums.

While addressing the United Nations General Assembly last year, Turkey’s President Erdogan said, “Despite the resolutions adopted by the UNSC, Kashmir is still besieged and eight million people are stuck in Kashmir. They cannot get out."

Analysts privy to these developments said, “Zakir Naik was given hospitality by Malaysia at Pakistan’s behest. Now, Pakistan is engaged in arranging large amounts of funding for Zakir Naik via countries like Qatar and Turkey.”

Naik continues to maintain several bank accounts in Gulf countries, including those in Qatar and the UAE, for the collection of such funds. This is to evade the scrutiny of the Indian government. He generally uses these accounts to transfer funds to his associates and to the network for activities by the IRF and other associated organisations. The Indian government has since then put a five-year ban on the IRF.

It has been seen that Turkey has become the epicenter of anti-India activities. The country, using the dispute between Qatar and other Gulf kingdoms, has increased its influence by stationing troops in Qatar.

Turkey has expanded its military base in Qatar, As per a report published last year in the New Arab, "Cooperation between Turkish and Qatari militaries has notably intensified since the Saudi-led blockade on Qatar in June 2017. Many Qataris believe Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain's siege to be a coup attempt against Qatar's sovereignty. Turkey was the first state to support Qatar and openly sided with Doha in one of the most challenging moments of the small Gulf state's history."

Turkey also took Qatar's side when an economic boycott from a group of countries led by Saudi Arabia was initiated.

‘’Turkish and Qatari central banks are tripling the limit of their existing swap deal to $15 billion to facilitate “bilateral trade in respective local currencies and to support the financial stability of the two countries. The deal highlights the strength of an alliance that began to deepen after the failed 2016 coup when Erdogan received backing from Qatar’s rulers. Turkey returned the favor a year later by siding with Qatar after it came under an economic boycott from a group of countries led by Saudi Arabia,’’ according to a report written by Cagan Koc published in Bloomberg this month.

In the recently organized virtual meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Maldives, Saudi Arabia and Oman opposed Pakistan rant against India. The Maldives defended India by saying that signaling out India over Islamophobia is incorrect when Pakistan tried to raise the issue of minority and Islamophobia in India. The reply came after Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN, Munir Akram, proposed that India is actively promoting Islamophobic agenda in the meeting. Giving a befitting reply to Pakistan, Maldives said that India is the largest democracy in the world and home to over 200 million Muslims, alleging Islamophobia would be factually incorrect and detrimental to the religious harmony in South Asia.

‘’Any organisation that has relations with the Qatari regime automatically has relations with the Turkish regime. This is very evident today in the case of Libya, where both regimes support the so-called National Accord Government which is “misleadingly called the recognized government”, while in fact, it has yet to be recognised by the Libyan Parliament to acquire any legitimacy, as required by the Skhirat Agreement.,’ said  Abdul Rahman Al-Turiri an article published in The Arab Weekly.

Naik is involved in the preaching of radical Islamic ideology that has influenced a significant section of the youth in India and abroad in an adverse manner and some of them are found to have been motivated to join extremist organisations such as Daesh.

Naik, a 53-year-old radical television preacher, left India in 2016 and subsequently moved to Malaysia, which has reportedly granted permanent residency to him. Naik was booked by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in 2016 based on a National Investigation Agency FIR that was registered under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).