Bangladesh: The Next Taliban State?

Published: February 9, 2005

Taj Hashmi
Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

 

One who knows Bangladesh and Islam has every reason to be surprised and worried about the recent posting by Eliza Griswold in the New York Times magazine (January 23, 2005) entitled, �The Next Islamist Revolution?� I have nothing to be worried about Griswold�s abysmal ignorance about Islam and Bangladesh. What is worrisome is the way the writer has demonised both Islam and Bangladesh, totally ignoring the positive aspects of the third largest Muslim country, which is a functional democracy, no longer considered a �basket case�� the way Henry Kissinger portrayed the country in 1972. This cry wolf in the long run is going to benefit the evil �Islamists� to the detriment of freedom and democracy. Hence this rejoinder.

This, however, does not mean that all is well in Bangladesh. There are elements of truth in a Time magazine story (�State of disgrace�, April 12, 2004), which has classified the country as Asia�s �most dysfunctional country� for the level of violence, corruption and political disharmony. Endemic violence, killing of political opponents through bombs and assassins, persecution of opposition leaders and supporters by using state machinery by the ruling power, systematic plunder of national wealth by bank defaulters, tax evaders and rampant corruption at every level are growing. The Transparency International has singled out this over-populated poor country, consecutively in the last four years, as the most corrupt.

Since mid-2004, members of the newly created Rapid Action Battalions have summarily executed around 300 known killer-extortionists, euphemistically in �cross-firing�. Not only senior cabinet ministers are justifying these extra-judicial killings of criminals and suspects, but also the public in general (with the exceptions of handful of politicians, intellectuals and human rights activists) are happy about the �cleansing process�. This is ominous. People are celebrating killing as the prevailing chaos, possibly heading towards anarchy, has desensitised the polity. Although nothing positive is forthcoming from this state of terror and lawlessness, but it is too trite a platitude to assume that only �Islamist terror� is responsible for the chaos. One should not blame an undefined �Islamist terror� for the prevalent violence in Bangladesh, as some Western �experts� blamed Muslims for the crime of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber in 1995.

Griswold is not the first Western writer to draw such an alarmist picture of Bangladesh. In April 2002, Bertil Lintner wrote a similar sensational piece in the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Wall Street Journal, that an Islamist revolution was taking place in the hills of this over-populated country. Fortunately for Bangladesh, the then US ambassador Mary Anne Peters registering her anger at the FEER and WSJ for publishing such biased articles on �a liberal Muslim nation� demanded an investigation to find out the motive behind the story. Philip Bowring, former editor of the FEER, also came forward to criticise the Western �Islam-bashers�, including Dow Jones, who owns the periodical. Bangladeshis in general condemned Lintner, as they are now condemning Griswold for good reasons.

However, what is surprising that Sheikh Hasina, the leader of the opposition in the parliament belonging to the Awami League, not only favours such alarmist stories but she has been persistently portraying the present coalition government of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia as �pro-Taliban�, �Pro-Pakistan� and �anti-Bangladesh�. The ruling coalition also vilifies Hasina and her party as �Pro-Indian� and �enemies of Islam�. It is noteworthy that while Hasina was the Prime Minister during President Clinton�s visit to Bangladesh in March 2000, her government warned Clinton about the �impending threat� of terrorist attacks on Clinton by Islamic militants. It is interesting that on the eve of the parliamentary elections in Bangladesh in October 2001, not long after the Nine-Eleven, posters on city walls in Dhaka emerged with images of Bin Laden and Khaleda Zia, portraying them as �friends�. Since losing the elections of 2001, Hasina has been projecting the government as illegitimate and the two Jamaat-i-Islami cabinet ministers as Taliban agents. One wonders if Griswold met only avid Awami supporters while preparing the factually wrong and analytically bizarre article on Bangladesh.

An appraisal of political Islam in Bangladesh requires an understanding of the socio-economic and cultural aspects of the polity. The separation of East Pakistan in 1971 from Islam-oriented Pakistan in the name of Bengali nationalism apparently signalled the departure of �political Islam� in Bangladesh. Soon after its emergence, Bangladesh adopted the four-pronged state ideology of nationalism, democracy, socialism and secularism. However, soon Islam re-emerged as an important factor in the country, both socially and politically. Since the overthrow of the first civilian government by a military coup d'etat in August 1975, Islam-oriented state ideology replaced �secularism� and �socialism�. Not long after his ascendancy as the new ruler in November 1975, General Ziaur Rahman (Zia) replaced the outwardly secular �Bengali nationalism� propounded by its founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Mujib), with �Bangladeshi nationalism�. One may argue that �Bangladeshi� is inclusive of the different non-Bengali minorities� nevertheless the term highlights the Muslim identity of the country, differentiating its Muslim majority Bengalis from the Hindu Bengalis in India.

It seems, after the failure of the �socialist-secular-Bengali-nationalist� Mujib government, his military successors, Zia (1975-1981) and Ershad (1982-1990), realized the importance of �political Islam� to legitimize their rule. Hence the rapid Islamization of the polity. This is not typical to Bangladesh. Egypt, Algeria and Pakistan under Bhutto, for example, which also went through �socialist� and �secular� phases of their history turned to �political Islam� under their successors. The post-Mujib oligarchs, very similar to their post-Nasser-Boumediene-Bhutto counterparts, hardly realized that by espousing �political Islam� they created their Frankenstein�s monsters.

Since Bangladesh is the third largest Muslim country in the world (after Indonesia and Pakistan), it is only natural to assume that Islam will play an important role in moulding its politics and culture while around 90 per cent of the population are Muslims�most importantly, representing one of the poorest, least literate and most backward sections of the world population. If mass poverty, and illiteracy have any positive correlation with Islamic resurgence, then Bangladesh has to be a fertile breeding ground of what is wrongly defined as �Islamic fundamentalism�. However, despite its poverty, backwardness and the preponderance of Islamic ethos in the main streams of its politics and culture, Bangladesh is not just another Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia or even Pakistan. Despite having several Islamic groups � some militant but most pacifist/devotional �the vast majority of Bangladeshi Muslims are least likely to become militant Islamists in the foreseeable future.

However, the spate of violence in the country against religious and ethnic minorities and political rivals�and of late, against the Ahmadiyya Muslim minority sect�is very disturbing. Bomb attacks on political rallies, movie theatres, cultural shows besides the public and secret killing of political rivals in the last five years have taken hundreds of lives and maimed many. Although the attacks on the tiny Ahmadiyya community solely by the Islami zealots (singling out the victims as �non-Muslim� heretics) are proto-fascist by nature, we are not sure if certain Islamic fanatics are also behind the other acts of terror, rape and arson.

Unfortunately, what Eliza Griswold has written about the �Islamist terror� in Bangladesh is grossly exaggerated, inaccurate, confusing and misleading. She has no idea about the similarities and differences between various Islamic groups and their leaders, the �great� and �little� traditions of Islam in the region and the difference between the mass/popular perceptions and the reality. She is too na�ve to believe that rural Muslim women wear �makeshift burka� or shroud to cover their body, because of an Islamist militant, called Bangla Bhai, in parts of north-western Bangladesh.

She again tells us about the strength and influence of Bangla Bhai, the main leader of a vigilante group of �Awakened Muslim Masses of Bangladesh�. According to her finding, Bangla Bhai with �probably 10,000 followers� wanted to try �an Islamist revolution in several provinces of Bangladesh� last spring. She also thinks that this fanatic vigilante group �seemed to have enough lightly armed adherents to make its rule stick.� Ironically for Griswold, the day before her article came out in the New York Times magazine, three Bangla Bhai cadres were brutally killed by local villagers in retaliation of killing of an Awami League leader on January 22nd. Bangla Bhai men were simply chased out by villagers and most of them are still absconding while the police arrested 65. It is beyond any stretch of the imagination that Bangla Bhai is �filling the power vacuum� while the government is �far away in Dhaka [less than 150 miles] and is � divided on precisely this question of how much Islam and politics should mix�.

Griswold is simply unaware of the fact that Bangla Bhai, who possibly went to Afghanistan during the heydays of the Taliban, is being used by some local godfathers belonging to the ruling party to decimate the rising menace of some clandestine �Maoist� communist groups. One of the godfathers, an erstwhile �Maoist� and now a ruling party leader, has been using the armed cadres of Bangla Bhai, who have killed more than 15 �Maoists� and maimed many since last spring. In short, what is going on in some parts of northwestern Bangladesh does not bear any semblance of an Islamic revolution but looks like gang warfare for dominance and extortion, common in many unruly pockets in the Third World.

Depending on laymen and unreliable sources, she tells us that Bangladesh �has become a haven� for jihadis in the wake of the Nine-Eleven and that there are Taliban training camps in the Chittagong hills run by madrassa (Islamic school) teachers and Afghan trained mujahedeen, surprisingly unnoticed by anyone in this over-populated country. She is even unaware of the fundamental differences and animosity between the Jamaat-i-Islami and the Deobandi �Wahhabi� mentors of the Taliban. She also narrates the absurd story about the �attempted murder� of poet Shamsur Rahman by two Harkat-ul-Jihad-ul-Islami (a pro-Taliban group) members in 1999. An attempted burglary by two men, over-powered by the unarmed wife and daughter-in-law of the elderly poet, somehow got wide publicity as a Taliban attack on the poet. This, however, does not mean that the so-called �Islamists� are not responsible for the recent killing of Bengali intellectuals and politicians.

Having said this, I am thankful to Griswold, at least for projecting Bangladesh to draw global attention to the anarchic situation in the country. With a little bit of restrain and no cry wolf sensationalizing one should hit at the crux of the problem, the growing Islamic militancy everywhere, including Bangladesh. In this age of Globalization, everything is globalized, including terror. Unless the donors and others having influence on Bangladesh exert pressure on the government and opposition parties to establish the rule of law, and most importantly, equitable distribution of wealth and opportunities, including modern education, the country would head towards anarchy from the state of chaos. It is frightening that even the Prime Minister has no control over local godfathers and warlords who protect and promote �Islamist� thugs like the Bangla Bhai. Although the vast majority of Bengali Muslims do not believe in theocracy and terror, unless the lower middle classes and the poor get a sense of belonging to the state, which so far is only looking after the interests of the rich and powerful, the most corrupt elements in Bangladesh, extremism with a tinge of fascism (both secular and religious) would continue to dog the polity. We have lessons to learn from the rise of fascism in Europe in this regard.

Jan 28,  2005.

About the author: 

The author has a BA Hons and MA in Islamic History and a PhD in Modern South Asian History. He is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain. He has authored four books including, Women and Islam in Bangladesh (Macmillan, London 2000). He teaches modern history at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He taught at various universities in Bangladesh, Australia, Singapore and Canada. He is a co-convener of the movement, "No to Political Islam". Email Address: [email protected] 

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