Bangladeshi cricketer Shakib Al Hasan has issued an apology for hurting ‘religious sentiments’. He had received death threats for attending the inauguration ceremony of a Kali Puja mandap in Kolkata.
According to Dhaka Tribune, Shakib visited Kolkata`s Kakurgachi to attend the inaugural ceremony of a Kali Puja mandap. However, this did not go well with the player`s fans who started criticising him.
“I want to start by saying I am a proud Muslim and try to practice religion properly. There will be mistakes and that is part of life. I apologise if I have made a mistake and apologise if I have hurt your sentiment,” Dhaka Tribune quoted Shakib as saying in a video.
Terming media reports false, Shakib said he travelled to Kolkata for a felicitation program on behalf of the authority of that area. “I want to make this clear. Shakib did not inaugurate our puja at all. We did not even invite him to inaugurate the puja. When we heard that he was coming to visit Kolkata, we wanted him to visit our puja stage once as a guest,” Paul said.
“After the puja was inaugurated, he simply got up on our stage and gave a short speech to the audience. Earlier, we brought him to the Puja premises in a horse-drawn carriage with due respect of a guest,” he further said.
“There was no intention to show my own religion in poor light. I believe Islam is a religion of peace. I always try to follow every custom of Islam. Yes, we do make mistakes but I try to learn from them in order to become a better Muslim,” he said in the video.
The Dhaka Tribune had reported that Bangladesh police arrested the man who had threatened to kill Shakib for “inaugurating the Kali Puja.” An Islamic radical, who was later identified as Mohsin Talukdar, on Sunday had threatened to kill the cricketer in a video post on Facebook accusing him of blasphemy.
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