Harun Izhar is being brought to the mainstream as an Islamic scholar, despite being a hardcore Taliban supporter and leader of the banned militant group HuJI-B, by Drik founder Shahidul Alam, a close aide of chief adviser Yunus, since 2018.

Since the August 5 changeover, Izhar and al-Qaeda leader Jasimuddin Rahmani have been promoting unity among the Islamist forces and calling for jihad in Myanmar, India, and Palestine while speaking at waz mahfils and YouTube talk shows by anarchist government supporters like Elias Hossain.

Izhar said publicly that they would distribute jihadist books among students from schools to universities to speed up the transition towards a Shariah law.

He named al-Qaeda promoters Asif Adnan, Abu Twaha Adnan, and Shamdul Arefin Shakti as his students!

Now adviser Asif Nazrul is holding meetings with Harun Izhar and telling the world that the jihadists who had killed hundreds of people in fierce attacks are Islamic scholars, not militants.

At the same time, adviser Asif Nazrul blamed Indian minister Amit Shah and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval for the Pahalgam attack on April 22 that left 28 tourists, all non-Muslims, by the armed jihadists of The Resistance Front, an offshoot of the Pakistan-based Laskar-e-Taiba.

Harun Izhar was charged with more than 25 cases in connection with terrorism. He came into the light out of his terror cocoon when the existence of a transnational extremist group was busted by law enforcement agencies while they were getting military training in his mountainous madrasa premises in Lalkhan Chittagong.

He and three other jihadists of Lasker-e-Taiba (LeT) were arrested from his secret training facility in 2009, and later information gleaned from them revealed that they were planning to attack the US embassy and Indian High Commission.

To add furthermore to his jihadi books, on July 10, 2013, he was arrested when a grenade went off in his madrasa, leaving three people dead, and a huge cache of IED-making materials was recovered from his room. HuJI-B operatives were making IEDs when a few more IEDs got blasted accidentally.

Under the umbrella of Manhaz, a faction of Hefazat-e-Islam got radicalized at the very prescription of Harun Izhar. On March 30, 2024, a video went viral in which Harun was seen leading a group of radicalized students giving allegiance to Hefazat Supremo seeking permission to wage jihad against India and Myanmar, said Awami League leader Mohammad A Arafat.

He brought havoc while protesting the Indian PM Modi’s visit to Bangladesh, which was celebrating 50 years of independence of Bangladesh in 2021.

While studying in Pakistan, he got in close nexus with LeT leaders and other jihadists groups in Pakistan.

He serves as a nodal point between HuJI-B and the Afghan war returnees with Hefazat. At the very height of his jihadist zeal, a sizeable portion of Hefazat became extremely radical, which portends a catastrophic jihadi landscape here in this subcontinent, Arafat added in an X post.

Recently, under his very patronage and in the banner of Towhidi Janata—Anti-Shatime Rasul Andolon and Kara Mukti Andolon, he forced the authority to free all the extremists in prison. He was involved in the attempted assassination of secular poet Shamsur Rahman, and arrested people got training from his madrasa.

Vehemently anti-Indian, Harun Izhar dreams of establishing the so-called Gazwa-e-Hind and masterminding Towhidi Janata, who are on a spree to establish Sharia.

The interim government is coordinating such pro-jihadist activities and propaganda campaigns through religious affairs adviser AFM Khalid Hossain—a Hefazat leader—and information adviser Mahfuj Alam—a former Shibir leader with Ahle Hadith links.

Had there been democracy, secularism, and the rule of law, these Islamist extremists would have been put in jail.