Mufti Amir Hamza, Jamaat-e-Islami MP for Kushtia-3 and an Islamic speaker, has declared that he will not let Engineer M. Iqbal Hossain, MP for Mymensingh-3 (Gouripur) and State Minister for Disaster Management and Relief, enter Kushtia. Warning the state minister, he said: “I will expose everything in the current session of parliament.” He said this at a waz mahfil in Phulpur upazila of Mymensingh late on the night of 7 November, and the video later went viral on social media.
In the video, Amir Hamza is heard saying: “State Minister Iqbal used the administration to shut down the Tafsirul Quran mahfil of the Shyamganj Bazar Boro Masjid Hafizia Madrasa on 7 November. If you have the right to go anywhere in Bangladesh, so do I. I will not let you enter Kushtia either. I will expose everything about you in parliament.”
The mahfil’s organising committee, however, has called Amir Hamza’s statement completely false, fabricated and politically motivated.
At a press briefing at the Shyamganj Bazar Boro Masjid grounds on Sunday (8 November) evening, organising committee member Hafez Md Sohel Rana said the committee itself decided on 1 November to postpone the mahfil temporarily for unavoidable reasons, and informed Amir Hamza’s personal secretary by written notice on 2 November. Neither the local MP nor the BNP had any involvement, he said.
The organising committee and local BNP leaders allege that the falsehood was spread out of political vengeance, at the instigation of a particular group, to cast doubt on the government.
Md Habibur Rahman, officer-in-charge (OC) of Gouripur police station, said there was no political involvement in stopping the mahfil and that the organising committee had postponed it itself.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report