Three Sufi followers are injured in machete attack

A group of machete-wielding men attacked members of a Sufi Muslim sect in western Bangladesh injuring three people, police said yesterday, the latest in a spate of attacks on
religious minorities.
About eight men, armed with bamboo sticks and machetes, set upon the Sufis on Saturday night while they were asleep in a village in the border district of
Chuadanga.
“Three members of the group were beaten by the attackers. They include a 50-year-old woman who had suffered grievous injury with a sharp weapon,” local police chief Humayun Kabir said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of murders of secular and liberal activists and religious minorities by suspected Islamist extremists.
Kabir said police suspect local hardline Muslims for the attack as the sect might have drawn the ire of the villagers due to their “unconventional and un-social” lifestyle.
“They are Muslim Fakirs, who don’t observe the daily Islamic prayer rituals. They sing devotional songs and have their own rituals,” local council chief Abdul Hannan said, using another name for the sect.
In May a Sufi leader was hacked to death and earlier this month Bangladesh suffered a bloody terror attack when Islamist gunmen stormed a Dhaka cafe popular with foreigners and killed 20 people.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for that and several other attacks, but the Bangladesh government blames homegrown extremist groups.
Sufi Islam is a mystical form of Islam popular in rural Bangladesh but considered deviant by many of the country’s majority Sunni Muslims who denounce its followers as “infidels”.
Minister holds meeting with universities: The Bangladesh government yesterday held a meeting with authorities of all private universities in the country against the backdrop of several of their students being linked to militant outfits.
The meeting, presided over by Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal took place on capital Dhaka, bdnews24 reported.
Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid, University Grants Commission Chairman Abdul Mannan, Bangladesh Police chief Shahidul Hoque and other top officials of security forces were present at the meeting.
Apart from officials and trustee board members of universities, students, teachers and parents also took part.
Ninety-five private universities have the licence to operate across Bangladesh but only 80 function currently.
The government and parents have raised security concerns over private university students going missing, as it has emerged that some of those involved in recent militant attacks were from private universities.
Islamic State reportedly published photos of five gunmen who killed 22 in a Dhaka cafe earlier this month. The gunmen also were gunned down during the operation to rescue the hostages in the cafe.
Soon afterwards, a suspected militant was killed during a gunfight following an attack on police guarding the Sholakia Eid congregation ground on July 7.
Of those six youths, four were from English-medium schools.
Two of them were students of the North South University and another of BRAC
University.
They were reported missing for months, their families said.
Last year, an investigation team of the University Grants Commission found jihadi books of banned militant outfit Hizb-ul Tahrir in the
university library.
Media reports said several teachers and students of the university were expelled for their links with militancy.
The government has asked the families to inform police if any of their young members has been missing. The educational institutions have also been asked to inform bout
absentees.