Muhammad Bayazeed Khan Panni

Bayazeed Khan Panni was a Bangladeshi politician, homeopathic medicine practitioner, writer, and religious reformer. He was a member of the East Pakistan Provincial Assembly from 1963 to 1965. He founded the religious group Hezbut Tawheed.

Biography

Panni was born on 11 March 1925 in Tangail. The Panni family were rural aristocrats, the zamindars of Karatia.
He studied at Islamia College, Calcutta, but left college without completing a degree.
Unsuccessful in business, he studied homeopathy and became a homeopathic practitioner.
In 1963, he stood in a by-election for the Mymensingh-II constituency of the East Pakistan Provincial Assembly. It had been vacated by Khurram Khan Panni when he was appointed High Commissioner to Nigeria. An independent candidate, he was elected with support from the Convention Muslim League and then joined their party. In the 1965 Pakistani provincial election, he stood for the Mymensingh-I seat. He finished third behind Humayun Khan Panni.
The next year, his book Bagh-ban-Banduk was published.
Panni left Bangladesh soon after it gained independence. Political scientist Ali Riaz wrote that he reportedly did so because he disliked the government and secularist policies. He frequently visited the Middle East. According to Anurag Tripathi, a professor of international relations, Panni "developed connections with many fanatic religious groups... during his stay abroad". In the 1980s, Panni returned to Bangladesh.
Sometime between 1992 and 1995, he founded Hezbut Tawheed. It refers to itself as a movement to "propagate the true teachings of Islam". Others classify it as a militant Islamist organization or an Islamist terrorist group.
Panni wrote books and pamphlets to guide his followers. His 1996 book E Islam Islam-e Noy called for "a return to the Islam preached during the Prophet’s era". Bangladesh banned the book on 10 May 1998.
Panni died on 16 January 2012.