Islamic Research Foundation

The Islamic Research Foundation was founded in Mumbai in 1991 by Zakir Naik, a Mumbai-born public speaker trained originally in medicine, who had turned his attention to comparative religious study and public preaching in the years before the foundation's creation. Its stated purpose was the "proper presentation, understanding and appreciation of Islam," pursued through lectures, publications and, from 2006 onward, its own satellite television network.

Peace TV, launched from Dubai on January 21, 2006, became the foundation's most visible and most consequential project. It carried Naik's own comparative religion lectures and question and answer sessions to an international audience that grew, according to figures the network itself reports, to roughly 200 million viewers across more than 200 countries by the network's own account, expanding into Urdu, Bangla and, for a time, Chinese language versions to serve audiences beyond its original English broadcasts.

For roughly a quarter century, the foundation operated as a Mumbai-based religious outreach organization whose reach was defined almost entirely by its founder's own media presence rather than by any institutional structure independent of him. That concentration would later matter a great deal when Indian authorities moved against the organization: unlike a denomination with distributed leadership, the Islamic Research Foundation was, in practice, largely one man's platform, which is part of why the foundation's legal troubles and its founder's personal legal troubles became, in the public record, difficult to separate from each other.

On November 17, 2016, India's Union Home Ministry issued a notification declaring the Islamic Research Foundation an unlawful association under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. The ministry's own stated rationale, quoted in Indian news reporting at the time, described the organization's activities as "prejudicial to the security of the country" and carrying "the potential of disturbing the peace and communal harmony." The declaration came roughly four months after a July 2016 attack in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in which investigators reported one of the attackers had followed Naik's social media presence, a connection Bangladesh cited separately in banning Peace TV that same July.

The organization challenged the ban in court. The Delhi High Court dismissed the Islamic Research Foundation's legal challenge, and the statutory tribunal established under the UAPA to review such bans confirmed the government's order. The ban has since been extended by the central government rather than allowed to lapse, most recently for a further five years announced in November 2021, keeping it in force through November 2026 as of that extension. India's National Investigation Agency filed criminal charges connected to the matter in October 2017, and the government revoked Naik's Indian passport in July 2017 on the agency's recommendation.

This entry records what is a matter of settled government notification and court record: the ban was issued, on a stated date, citing a stated legal basis, reviewed and upheld through India's own tribunal and court process, and extended on a stated schedule. The underlying criminal allegations against the foundation and its founder remain, as of this writing, a separate and ongoing legal matter rather than a concluded one, and this entry does not take a position on their merits.