Opinion | No, Bangladesh's Islamist Descent Is Not Yunus' Doing Alone

In April, the brutal killing of a member and leader of an organisation of a minority community. In May, mass protests against proposed legal reforms for women. In June, the demolition of a prominent place of worship of a minority community. In the same week in June, a brutal attack on another member of the minority community over charges of "blasphemy".

It may read like a litany straight from ISIS (Islamic State) lands. But sadly, and rather ominously, this is happening in neighbouring Bangladesh.  While attacks on Hindus - all the aforementioned attacks were against members of the minuscule Hindu community, which now makes up a mere 8% of Bangladesh's population - have increased manifold since August last year, when the government of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina was overthrown. Violence against other minority communities, such as Buddhists in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, has also grown since then.

Bangladesh is hurtling into an Islamist cesspool under the watch, ironically, of Nobel laureate Yunus Mohammad. One of the most recent acts of the Yunus-led interim government was to register the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh (JIB) as a political party. That means it can now contest elections in Bangladesh. The outfit's reinstatement in Bangladesh's political life bodes ill not only for Hindus but also for the country's Muslim majority.

The Origins Of The Jamaat

The organisation has a complex and tortuous history. Born in undivided India in 1941, the Jamaat is the subcontinental twin of the Middle East's Muslim Brotherhood, with which it maintained close ties. Founded by ideologue Syed Abul Ala Mawdudi, it advocated for the establishment - even by force, if required - for an Islamic sharia state in India. Mawdudi, often hailed for opposing the Partition of 1947, did so only because he wanted to see Sharia established in all of the subcontinent, not just a part. During the Partition, he moved to Pakistan and subsequently led the JeI Pakistan, from which later sprang the Bangladesh Jamaat. 

True to its goal, the Bangladesh Jamaat played a significant role during the 1971 liberation war, collaborating closely and extensively with the Pakistani army. Many of its leaders were later imprisoned and executed on charges of war crimes, and many Bangladeshis, especially older generations, remain wary of it.

Nevertheless, the Jamaat remained a potent force in both Bangladesh's society and politics, often aligning itself with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, a major political force in the country. In fact, its student wing, the Bangladesh Chatro Shibir, was at the forefront of the protests - and the ensuing violence - that led to Hasina's ouster last year. 

The Hefazat-e-Islam 

In 2013, a court ruling revoked the organisation's registration as a political party. But soon, other groups such as the Hefazat-e-Islam sprang up as fronts. The Hefazat, launched in 2010 to "protect Islam" from the then-ruling party, the secular Awami League, was spurred into action particularly by a proposed policy to confer equal inheritance rights to women. It was the Hefazat that in 2021 had mounted protests when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Bangladesh to celebrate the golden jubilee of its Independence and the birth centenary of its founder, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The protests had left 12 people dead across different districts. 

Last year, the Hasina government banned the Jamaat for its role in fomenting the violent protests against her. However, within a month of coming to power, the new interim government in Dhaka lifted the ban. Recently, the Jamaat was at the forefront of nationwide protests against a bill for legal reforms for Muslim women.

Against this background, it may be tempting to lay all the blame for the “Talibanisation of Bangladesh” at Yunus's doorstep. But that may not be entirely correct. The truth is that this shift has been underway in Bangladesh for a long time now, and was visible - even ignored - under the regime of Hasina, India's ‘great friend'.

The Emboldening Of Radicalists

For many Bangladeshis, the event that is most etched in memory and emotion is not the 1947 Partition of India, but the 1971 war with Pakistan, which had been the country's western wing. Having faced brutality and genocide at the hands of their co-religionists, the 1971 liberation struggle had envisaged Bangladesh as a secular, plural state. Yet, the first attack on Hindus in independent Bangladesh occurred just the next year in 1972, targeting Durga Puja celebrations, a festival important to Bengali Hindus. 

Over the years, such persecution continued, and the percentage of Hindus in the country dwindled from over 20% to 8%.  When hardly any convictions followed, it emboldened the perpetrators of such attacks, which included vandalism of temples, desecration of deities, arson, and plunder. Often, these attacks have been carried out on the flimsiest and sometimes non-existent grounds, often under the excuse of ‘blasphemy' or ‘hurting the feelings of Muslims'. 

When The Constitution Was Tweaked

The roots for the institutionalisation of Islamism were undoubtedly laid down by General Ziaur Rahman, who, through a military proclamation, amended the 1972 Constitution and inserted “Bismillah-Ar-Rahman-Ar-Rahim” (“in the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful”) in the preamble. The principle of secularism was removed from the Constitution in 1977 through the Fifth Amendment. In 1988, Islam was declared the state religion. 

A few major factors that strengthened the cause of Islamism were the Iranian revolution and the discovery of oil in the Arab Gulf. The latter drove many to migrate from Bangladesh to the Gulf in search of work, where an ideological indoctrination took place. On their return home, these workers would implement similar rules in their homes and communities. Simultaneously, many Gulf countries began to export Wahabism in order to counter Iran's Shiite theocracy. Bangladesh did not remain immune to these shifts underway in the larger Muslim world. 

Slowly, money started pouring into Bangladesh for the construction of newer, swankier mosques, more and more madrasas, more ‘dawah', and, in general, for more culturally Arabised and puritanical ways. All of this ultimately translated into intolerance for alternative ideas and views. 

Ghosts Of The Taliban

The rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan gave yet another fillip to Islamism in Bangladesh. During the Soviet-Afghan war - or the Afghan jihad - many Bangladeshis had travelled to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. The slogan "Amra hobo Taliban/ Bangla hobe Afghan' [“We will be Taliban, Bangla(desh) will be Afghanistan”] came to be a popular slogan in the 1990s in Bangladesh. For instance, Mullah Omar, the founding leader of the Taliban, was said to have 200 recruits from Bangladesh amongst his personal guards. After the war, many of these hardened jihadists returned to Bangladesh and helped spread their radical ideology.

In fact, next month, Bangladesh will mark the 20th anniversary of the nationwide bombings on August 17, 2005, which targeted 63 of Bangladesh's 64 districts, including government buildings, train stations, courtrooms, etc. The attacks, which saw over 500 bombs going off at 300 locations, were the handiwork of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), whose founder and spiritual leader Shaykh Abdur Rahman had participated in the Soviet-Afghan war.

When Hasina Looked The Other Way

Through all these years, the slow disenfranchisement of minority groups in Bangladesh has continued. No commissions to protect their rights were instituted - not even by the Awami League, which was in power for much of Bangladesh's history. The first major violence against Hindus in Bangladesh took place in 1992 after the Babri Masjid demolition in India, when the BNP government led by Khaleda Zia was in power. By 2001, when her government was re-elected, attacks against Hindus in Bangladesh had peaked.

The situation didn't improve under Hasina's rule either. While the attacks were certainly not orchestrated by the Awami League, her government was happy to look the other way. While it cracked down on terror groups such as the JMB, other outfits, like the Ansar ul Islam - said to be the Bangladesh chapter of Al Qaeda - and those linked to ISIS, mushroomed. Attacks against women, Hindus, secular groups, members of the LGBT groups, writers, artists increased. Many Bangladeshis, even entire families in some cases, migrated to the Islamic State caliphate that had been established for a brief period from 2014-2017 in Syria and Iraq.

Sheikh Hasina with her father Mujibur Rehman

Amidst all this, Sheikh Hasina, otherwise trying to live up to the ideals of her father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman - his house-museum was recently vandalised, by the way - turned a blind eye to the Islamist fundamentalism taking root in Bangladeshi society. Ironically, this was the same Hasina who would crush legitimate political opposition with a heavy hand. Under her watch, Bangladesh witnessed several ISIS-like lone wolf attacks on journalists, bloggers and reformists, targeting of Hindus over trumped-up blasphemy charges, and disruption of Durga Puja celebrations.

The Undoing Of A Secular Bangladesh

Critics have pointed out how the Hasina government's 2018 Digital Security Act targeted mediapersons and political activists but not religious radicals or communal activists, whose hate speech against non-Muslims often went viral on social media. 

A particularly glaring shortcoming of her government that history will record with great astonishment is the failure to institutionalise corrective mechanisms for protecting the rights and addressing the grievances of minority communities, who had offered her their unwavering support for years.

In the run-up to the 2018 elections, the General Assembly of the Bangladesh Hindu-Buddhist-Christian Unity Council presented various demands to all political parties, including the formation of a National Minority Commission, a minority ministry, and the formulation of laws for the protection of minorities and against discrimination. Nothing came of this initiative even though Hasina remained in power for six more years after that. 

Today, under the Yunus administration, extremist elements in Bangladeshi society have been emboldened to act freely without fear or even a fig leaf of the tolerance and pluralism that the Awami League had somewhat defended. Not just minorities, but even majority Muslims will have to bear the brunt of this growing radicalisation. The protests against the women's bill will ultimately affect Muslim women, while the enfranchisement of the JIB could contribute to tensions within the community as radicalists push the canon of an ‘ideal Muslim'. 

Bangladesh, once a shining beacon in the Muslim world, may just have become a textbook case of how not to go about a regime change. 

(The author is a journalist and political analyst)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author