BANGLADESH ... 4

BANGLADESH ... 4

Islam is the strongest bond between Muslims which is why despite the rape of East Pakistan by West Pakistan in 1971, Bangladesh has again geared up for reunion with its oppressor so as to become part and parcel of the Islamic Umma. This was inevitable given 

(a) the very nature of Islam with its jihādi tenets, intolerance of other faiths and emphasis on foundational faith rather than scientific scepticism and critical thinking,

(b) the separatist Islamic cause cited by Muhammad Ali Jinnah that created Pakistan, the eastern province of which in 1971 became Bangladesh, and its unfinished agenda,

 

(c) the appeasement policy followed wittingly and unwittingly by successive Bangladeshi governments which helped proliferate mosques and madrassas, Islamic bodies throughout Bangladesh and waz mehfils for mass propagation of the faith with all its toxic indoctrination,

(d) the geopolitical play of great western powers which has perceptibly made Muslims globally suffer from an identity crisis which lacuna the extremist factions have to their advantage used and radicalised millions of the youth to potentially rise in jihādi resistance and even offence,

(e) the open appeasement by democratic governments the world over of Muslims to secure votes has emboldened the terrorist organisations to step up jihādi activity,

(f) the declaration of Islam in 1987 as the state religion of Islam,

(g) sustained dictatorship in Bangladesh of a single party by depriving free and fair elections for well over a decade,

(h) disgruntlement of the people at the high-handedness of the Sheikh Hasina regime,

(i) pandering to Islamic fundamentalism while giving no protection to freethinkers who criticise Islam,

(j) the passage of time, five decades, which has weakened public memory of the Liberation War of 1971, with those born after 1971 being increasingly ignorant about the suffering and sacrifices of the people of East Pakistan then,

(k) the long history of political violence in Bangladesh right since inception, its first casualty being Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman and his large family barring Sheikh Hasinā and Sheikh Rehāna on 15 August, 1975 and

(l) the presence and progressive proliferation of the Razākārs within Bangladesh, men who had sided with Pakistan in its genocide of three million Bengalis in 1971, suppressed then by the combined might of the Indian Army and the Mukti Bāhini but never quite obliterated, motivated people who have waited five decades to fulfil their Islamic agenda of uniting with Pakistan. 

Ultimately it has been the victory of Islam in Bangladesh over secularism, liberalism and progress which will now take her to the darkness of the Middle Ages unless sanity returns to the country, now in anarchic turmoil. 

Written by Sugata Bose