\n Bangladeshi investigators said Sunday that a young man accused of stabbing a celebrated secular writer at a seminar had targeted him as \"an enemy of Islam\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Saturday's attack on Zafar Iqbal in the northern city of Sylhet was just the latest in a series of stabbings of secular or atheist authors and bloggers in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.\n<\/p>\n
\n Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, whose government has waged a fierce crackdown on homegrown extremism in recent years, blamed \"religious fanatics\" for the assault.\n<\/p>\n
\n Iqbal, a longstanding champion of free speech and secularism, remains in a stable condition after being flown to a military hospital in Dhaka with stab wounds to his head.\n<\/p>\n
\n Police detained 21-year-old Faizul Hasan, a former Islamic seminary student, and were investigating any ties to the radical groups.\n<\/p>\n
\n Colonel Ali Haider Azad Ahmed from the elite Rapid Action Battalion unit said Hasan told investigators it was \"his duty as a Muslim to resist those who work against Islam\".\n<\/p>\n
\n \"He has said Dr Zafar Iqbal was an enemy of Islam,\" Ahmed told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n Police said Hasan, whose father was a teacher at an Islamic seminary, may have had links to extremists blamed for attacks on secular and atheist writers in the last four years.\n<\/p>\n
\n Suspected Islamist radicals have killed around a dozen such writers and bloggers, including an American atheist blogger of Bangladeshi origin.\n<\/p>\n
\n Police have blamed homegrown Islamist extremist group Ansarullah Bangla Team -- also known as Ansar-al Islam and linked to Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent -- for most of the attacks.\n<\/p>\n
\n Bangladesh's government has provided security for top secular writers and activists since Islamist extremists named them in several lists of targets.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Religious fanatics' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Iqbal, 64, is a bestselling author and celebrity speaker who regularly appears at campuses nationwide. The US-trained professor teaches at a state university in Sylhet.\n<\/p>\n
\n The attack was swiftly condemned by protesters in Dhaka and Sylhet, who staged torchlit marches and planned further rallies to demand justice later Sunday.\n<\/p>\n
\n Hasina urged Bangladeshis to remain alert to the threat of extremism.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Those responsible for these incidents have become religious fanatics,\" she said Sunday.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"They think that they'll go to a heaven, but they will actually go to hell, because no one goes to heaven by killing a human being.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n In recent years Iqbal had supported the execution of top Islamist party leaders -- key opponents of Hasina -- for their part in war crimes in the early 1970s, despite allegations the prime minister was crushing dissent.\n<\/p>\n
\n Bangladesh has been waging a war against extremists in the wake of numerous attacks by radical groups in recent years.\n<\/p>\n
\n In July 2016, militants stormed a Dhaka cafe and massacred 22 hostages, including 18 foreigners, in an assault claimed by the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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