KOZHIKODE: AP Abdul Hakeem Azhari, general secretary of the Sunni Yuvajana Sangham (SYS) and son of Sunni scholar Kanthapuram A P Aboobacker Musliyar, has landed in a soup over his remark that “namaz-skipping Muslims should be killed and their houses torched”. The controversial statement came on February 19 in a question-and-answer session on a Muslim college campus at Peruvallur in Malappuram.
A video of the statement is being circulated widely now, apparently with an eye on elections as Azhari had publicly extended support to the LDF. In the video, a student asks Azhari why Islamic countries and religious bodies failed to come up unitedly against the acute injustice meted out to Rohingya Muslims and Muslims of Palestine.
Answering this, Azhari said that if people were beaten up and their houses torched in a place, then people there may not have been of fering namaz.