Sufi leader killed in Bangladesh

A local Sufi leader has been found hacked to death in Bangladesh in a suspected Islamist killing, the police said on Saturday, two weeks after the ISIS group claimed the murder of a liberal professor in the same north-western district.

Mohammad Shahidullah, 65, had been missing since leaving home on Friday morning before villagers found his body on Friday night in a pool of blood in a mango grove in Rajshahi.

It comes amid a troubling rise in violence against religious minorities, liberal activists and foreigners in Bangladesh, with six murders since the start of April alone.

“He was not a famous Sufi. But there could be a possibility that he was killed by Islamist militants,” Rajshahi district police chief Nisharul Arif said.

The police officer said the killing of the self-proclaimed Sufi master was “similar” to other recent hacking deaths of religious minorities carried out by attackers with machetes or cleavers.

“He was slaughtered from his neck and there are also some deep gashes in his throat,” Abdur Razzak, a local police official said, adding that “he had scores of followers in a nearby district”.

Sufism is considered deviant by many of the country’s majority Sunnis.

They include the Saudi Arabia-inspired Salafis and Wahabis, who are gaining strength in the country.

Suspected Islamists have been blamed for or claimed dozens of murders of atheist bloggers, liberal voices and religious minorities in recent years including Sufi, Shia and Ahmadi Muslims, Hindus, Christians and foreigners.

In the past five weeks, two gay activists, a liberal professor, an atheist activist and a Hindu tailor who allegedly made derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammed were hacked to death.

The ISIS group and a Bangladeshi branch of Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for several of the killings.

However, the secular government in Dhaka denies that ISIS and Al Qaeda are behind the attacks, saying they have no known presence in Bangladesh, and blames the killings on homegrown militants.