Shaykh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif, the so-called chief of IS fighters in Bangladesh, has made the claim in an interview to the latest issue of its propaganda magazine Dabiq.
Bangladesh government has been asserting that the leaders and workers of Jamaat, which opposed a secular Bangladesh’s independence from Islamic Pakistan in 1971, were engaged in militant activities. But the Islamist party has always refuted the allegations.
The group has claimed credit for several attacks in Bangladesh, including the murders of foreigners and attacks on Shias and Ahmadiyyas.
But the government and the security forces have denied the presence of the group in the country.
In the Dabiq interview published on Wednesday, Hanif was asked that with the government’s execution of several Jamaat leaders, had its followers taken a lesson?
Hanif replied that Jamaat leaders were facing the same fate as those of ‘sahwāt’ in Iraq and ‘the Ikhwān’ in Egypt, “as the sunnah of Allah never changes. He will humiliate and punish in this world and the Hereafter whoever abandons the religion and allies with the kuffār”.
“There are some grassroots level followers and supporters of “Jamaat-e-Islami” who have repented from their shirk and joined the ranks of the Khilāfah’s soldiers in Bengal, walhamdulillāh,” he added.