In the article, “Bangladesh: Islamic Militancy and the Rise of religious Right” Smruti Pattanaik writes about the pattern in events that flowed from the August 17, 2007 bombings in the country. Terrorism was the work of Banglabhai in the north who wanted to create a Taliban-like state under Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) and Sheikh Abdur Rehman of Jamiat Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), both erstwhile members of the student wing of Jama’at-e Islami. The Bangladesh National party (BNP) of Begum Zia took the Jamaat-produced radicals under its wing and denied they existed.
JMB’s Rehman visited Pakistan in 1999 to take training in POK. Banglabhai was already said to be a veteran of Afghan jihad wanting to recreate it in Bangladesh. When they began killing people, as in the case of poet Shamsur Rehman in 1995, the BNP denied it vociferously, blaming the killings on India and America. This BNP did despite the fact that Jama’at warriors had rebelled against the Jama’at acceptance of women as leaders. The other spin-off from Afghan jihad was Harkatul Mujahideen Islami (HUJI) which was funded by the Arabs whom the state allowed to have linkages with the two above rising stars of Islamic violence.
The BNP just wouldn’t own up to terrorism in the country till foreign pressure got it to catch and prosecute Banglabhai and Rehman, only to see them condemned to death by a court. Then neither of the two mainstream parties would support the call for their execution. This was somewhat like Pakistan’s parties who don’t want to even acknowledge the reality of Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorism in Pakistan. It was the caretaker government, supported by the army in 2001, that finally executed the two mass killers of Bangladesh.
BNP leader Begum Zia’s son Tariq Rehman was running his own shadow government in Dhaka and gave protection to the killers. Needless to say, the Islamic killers hated Awami League and India with equal fervour. Later some BNP leaders, including a minister Aminul Haq, were put under trial and got long sentences in jail for killing opponents through Islamists.
The money for Islamic terror comes from the Arabs in the Gulf. There are 15 local Islamic NGOs and 34 foreign Islamic NGOs in Bangladesh. They give no one any accounts, receive their money through hundi and are supposed to dispose of 200 crore takas (p.196).
London Muslim terrorists gave JMB £10,000 for killing innocent people back home; and terrorist Rehman got big money from Rabita al-Islam, Kuwait, for doing the same job (p.200). Religious leaders who run these dangerous organisations regularly visit the Middle East for Zakat and collect huge sums which they often embezzle, but their Arab benefactors don’t seem to mind that too much.
Is Bangladesh becoming more like Pakistan with strongly Deobandi and Wahhabi in its new intolerant and violent character? This question deserves close attention, and a considered response since Bangladesh is a land which is not cut in the Pak mode at the time of its birth.
